Bug#1136565: pulseaudio uses pidof but does not depend on procps

[Gioele Barabucci]

Control: tags -1 patch

On Thu, 14 May 2026 01:31:20 +0200 Gioele Barabucci <gioele at debian.org> 
wrote:
> it appears that pulseaudio 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 pulseaudio
>   that use `pidof` at runtime;
> * via the `Build-Depends:` field of pulseaudio, 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 pulseaudio, 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 pulseaudio uses `pidof` due to the following
> code snippets:
> 
> ```
> path: pulseaudio_17.0+dfsg1-2.1/src/utils/pa-info
> 	'pulseaudio_ps_do'
> 	'which pulseaudio'
> 	'pidof pulseaudio'
> 	'pulseaudio --version'
> 	'pactl info'
> ```
A cursory review of the binary packages shows that `pa-info` is shipped 
as part of `pulseaudio-utils` and, indeed, `pidof` is called from 
`/usr/bin/pa-info` during the generation of diagnostic output about the 
system setup.

You can find a MR that fixes this issue by adding `procps` to the 
Recommends field of `pulseaudio-utils` at 
<https://salsa.debian.org/pulseaudio-team/pulseaudio/-/merge_requests/31>.

Regards,

-- 
Gioele Barabucci