Hi I see some possible improvements to the filesystem package to use some of the recent improvements to systemd. I don't know if they are already planned. All the empty directories and the links could be replaced by a tmpfiles.d file, like /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/archlinux.conf. /etc/{group,gshadow,passwd,shadow} could be removed as the base users and groups are already created by the upstream sysusers.d files. The arch-specific ones (like bin or daemon) could be created by /usr/lib/sysusers.d/archlinux.conf. The others /etc/ files could be moved to /usr/share/etc/ and copied as needed to /etc using tmpfiles.d files. A filesystem.install file could launch systemd-tmpfiles and systemd-sysusers to update the local configuration when the package is updated. In the end, filesystem would contain only tmpfiles.d and sysusers.d files + /usr/share/etc. I can make a draft of this package if you want. More infos : http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/stateless.html