Control: tags -1 patch

On Thu, 14 May 2026 01:31:20 +0200 Gioele Barabucci <[email protected]> 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

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