Re: MBF proposal: pidof used without Depends: procps

On 09/05/26 13:16, Richard Lewis wrote:
> Gioele Barabucci <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> 
> 
>> The aim of this MBF is to add procps to the dependencies of 94 package
>> that make use of `pidof` at runtime. (The use of pidof in
>> initscritpts, build-time tests, and autopkgstests will be addressed
>> separately. See #810018 for more information.)
>>
> 
> maybe include something like the sentence in brackets in the template,
> as packages using pidof are presumably somewhat likely to also use it in
> tests and other places, and some peple might want to address those uses
> as well, rtaher than having to do another upload in future

Prompted by this comment I thought a bit about the overlap between 
packages using pidof at runtime, buildtime and autopkgtests, and I think 
it would be smarter to merge all these categories and let the 
maintainers do what is best (for example: if the use of pidof is not in 
a file /tests/, but that code is used only by the tests, this would be 
currently misclassified as "runtime" instead of "build-time tests".)

Revised MBF text:

---
Subject: ${SOURCE} uses pidof but does not depend on procps

Source: ${SOURCE}
Version: ${VERSION}
Usertags: pidof-without-procps

Dear maintainer(s) of ${SOURCE},

it appears that ${SOURCE} uses `pidof` in its testsuite, or that at 
least one of the binary packages built from it uses `pidof` at runtime. 
Historically, `pidof` was provided by the Essential package 
`sysvinit-tools`, making an explicit dependency unnecessary. However 
`pidof` will soon be moved to `procps` and will no longer be part of the 
Essential set.

Please add an explicit dependency on `procps`:

* via the Depends: field of all binary packages of ${SOURCE} that use 
`pidof` at runtime;
* via the Build-Depends: field of ${SOURCE}, if `pidof` is used in tests 
run at build-time;
* via the Depends: field(s) of `debian/control/tests`, if `pidof` is 
used in autopkgtests.

To prevent any disruption for users of ${SOURCE}, please add this 
dependency now, before `pidof` is moved from `sysvinit-utils` to 
`procps`. Alternatively, you could remove all runtime uses of `pidof`.

It is believed that ${SOURCE} uses `pidof` due to the following code 
snippets:

```
${SNIPPET}
```

Feel free to close this issue if this is a false positive (for example 
if this code is in an unreachable code path).
---

Regards,