#1136472 awesome-extra uses pidof but does not depend on procps

#1136472#5
Date:
2026-05-13 23:25:19 UTC
From:
To:
Dear maintainer(s) of awesome-extra,

it appears that awesome-extra 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 awesome-extra
  that use `pidof` at runtime;
* via the `Build-Depends:` field of awesome-extra, 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 awesome-extra, 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 awesome-extra uses `pidof` due to the following
code snippets:

```
path: awesome-extra_2023010601/tyrannical/utils/xephyr.sh
{
  $pidof Xephyr | cut -d\  -f1
}


path: awesome-extra_2023010601/tyrannical/utils/xephyr.sh
function awesome_pid()
{
  $pidof awesome | cut -d\  -f1
}


path: awesome-extra_2023010601/tyrannical/utils/xephyr.sh
awesome=`which awesome`
xephyr=`which Xephyr`
pidof=`which pidof`
test -x $awesome || { echo "Awesome executable not found. Please install Awesome"; exit 1; }
```

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

Regards,

#1136472#10
Date:
2026-10-22 21:40:57 UTC
From:
To:
Control: severity -1 minor
Dear maintainer(s) of awesome-extra,

pidof is used only in an optional script that is run only when awesome
is used inside xephyr, something that is far from the default Debian setup.

You can probably close this bug with no further action or add procps to
the Recommends field of awesome-extra.

In the meantime I'm lowering the severity of this issue to minor.

Regards,