#1136511 gparted uses pidof but does not depend on procps

#1136511#5
Date:
2026-05-13 23:28:14 UTC
From:
To:
Dear maintainer(s) of gparted,

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

```
path: gparted_1.8.0-1/gparted.in
for k in '' `echo "$PATH" | sed 's,:, ,g'`; do
	if test -x "$k/hal-lock"; then
		if pidof hald 1> /dev/null; then
			HAVE_HAL_LOCK=yes
			break


path: gparted_1.8.0-1/gparted.in
#  Only permit one instance of GParted to execute at a time
#
if pidof gpartedbin 1> /dev/null; then
	echo "The process gpartedbin is already running."
	echo "Only one gpartedbin process is permitted."


path: gparted_1.8.0-1/gparted.in
         /usr/lib/udisks2/udisks2-inhibit; do
	if test -x $k; then
		if pidof udisksd 1> /dev/null; then
			HAVE_UDISKS2_INHIBIT=yes
			UDISKS2_INHIBIT_BIN=$k


path: gparted_1.8.0-1/gparted.in
for k in '' `echo "$PATH" | sed 's,:, ,g'`; do
	if test -x "$k/udisks"; then
		if pidof udisks-daemon 1> /dev/null; then
			HAVE_UDISKS=yes
			break


path: gparted_1.8.0-1/gparted.in
for k in '' `echo "$PATH" | sed 's,:, ,g'`; do
	if test -x "$k/systemctl"; then
		if pidof systemd 1> /dev/null; then
			HAVE_SYSTEMCTL=yes
			break
```

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

Regards,