Bug 2218498

Summary:	Please consider demoting the dependency on systemd
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Stephen Kitt <skitt>
Component:	libreswan	Assignee:	Daiki Ueno <dueno>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	BaseOS QE Security Team <qe-baseos-security>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	8.8	Keywords:	Triaged
Target Milestone:	rc
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Description Stephen Kitt 2023-06-29 12:01:42 UTC

Description of problem:

The libreswan package has a strong dependency on systemd, but its contents can be used without systemd (e.g. in Submariner). In a container image, the result is that libreswan pulls in the systemd ecosystem, which is quite large, even if systemd ends up never being used.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

All current versions (e.g. 4.9-3, 4.9-4).

How reproducible:

100%.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install libreswan in a container image without systemd.
2.
3.

Actual results:

systemd ends up installed.

Expected results:

systemd isn’t installed.

Additional info:

I know that requiring systemd is prescribed as a “SHOULD” in the Fedora packaging guidelines (https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/Scriptlets/#_systemd). Those guidelines do however allow packages to only specifying an ordering requirement, not a strong dependency:

> If the package wants to use systemd tools if they are available, but does not want to declare a dependency, then the %{?systemd_ordering} macro MAY be used as a weaker form of %{?systemd_requires} that only declares an ordering during an RPM transaction.