[arch-dev-public] Cyclic dependencies between systemd and util-linux

[Dave Reisner]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 07:56:56PM +0100, Thomas Bächler wrote:
> Right now, we have a problem with cyclic dependencies in core: systemd
> requires libblkid and libuuid (systemd-udevd) and util-linux requires
> libudev (findmnt, and soon uuidd [1]).

Do you run a huge SAP install? I don't run a huge SAP install. I'm not
sure why anyone who doesn't run a huge SAP install cares about uuidd,
but I understand your concern.

> I don't like this situation and currently it is revoled by adding
> systemd as optdepend to util-linux. This has the side effect that in a
> chroot with only certain packages installed, one has to explicitly
> install systemd to get findmnt working. Since I've run into this
> situation and cyclic deps are bad, I propose the following:
> 
> Split both util-linux and systemd into libutil-linux/util-linux and
> libsystemd/systemd. Then we could have both util-linux and systemd
> depend on both libsystemd and libutil-linux.

Is this really necessary just to avoid minor problems in chroots? We
used to have a libsystemd package, and subsequently ditched it. I don't
see anything critical here.

But hey, for some good news, there's already/still packages which depend
on libsystemd.