Bug#1136509: Bugs#1136509 gnome-boxes uses pidof but does not depend on procps

[Gioele Barabucci]

Control: found -1 50.0-6
Control: severity -1 minor

On Thu, 14 May 2026 01:28:08 +0200 Gioele Barabucci <gioele at debian.org> 
wrote:
> it appears that gnome-boxes uses `pidof` in its testsuite, or that
> at least one of its binary packages 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 gnome-boxes
>   that use `pidof` at runtime;
> * via the `Build-Depends:` field of gnome-boxes, if `pidof` is
>   used in tests run at build-time;
> * via the `Depends:` field of `debian/control/tests`, if `pidof` is
>   used in autopkgtests.
> 
> To prevent any disruption for users of gnome-boxes, please add
> this dependency now, before `pidof` is moved from `sysvinit-utils` to
> `procps`. Alternatively, you could remove all uses of `pidof`.
> 
> It is believed that gnome-boxes uses `pidof` due to the following
> code snippets:
> 
> ```
> path: gnome-boxes_49.1-1/tests/steps/general.py
>     keyCombo('<Ctrl><Q>')
>     counter = 0
>     while call('pidof gnome-boxes > /dev/null', shell=True) != 1:
>         sleep(0.5)
>         counter += 1
> ```
Dear gnome-boxes maintainer(s),

after a cursory look at the source code, it seems to me that `pidof` is 
only used as part of the "Quit Boxes" Behave step. That step is used in 
many different Behave feature file in `tests/`.

However, from the build log, it does not seem that `behave` is called at 
build time (for example by `dh_auto_test`). And there are no autopkgtests.

You can probably close this bug report without further action.

In the meantime I'll downgrade the severity to minor.

Regards,

-- 
Gioele Barabucci