Bug 812874

Currently libvirt only has the following related to numactl:

%if %{with_numactl}
# For QEMU/LXC numa info
BuildRequires: numactl-devel
%endif

so it never directly requires numactl at install/runtime anyway. I assume it's just getting the libs it requires due to the implied dependency created by linking to libnuma.so

To verify, on my f17 system which is more or less identical to rawhide from libvirt's point of view) I just removed the numactl package, and it didn't complain about this breaking any dependency for libvirt (or any other package). On F16, on the other hand (where numactl-libs hasn't been split off from numactl), when I attempt to remove the numactl package, I'm told that this would also necessarily remove libvirt.

I'm closing this. Please re-open if I've missed some detail.

We may have missed one detail: on F17, we must build against the new devel package.  See also https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2012-May/msg00425.html

In libvirt.spec.in, we have:

# Numactl is not available on s390[x] and ARM
%ifarch s390 s390x %{arm}
%define with_numactl 0
%endif

# numad is used to manage the CPU placement dynamically,
# it's not available on s390[x] and ARM.
%if 0%{?fedora} >= 17 || 0%{?rhel} >= 6
%ifnarch s390 s390x %{arm}
%define with_numad    0%{!?_without_numad:%{server_drivers}}
%endif
%endif
%endif

%if %{with_numactl}
# For QEMU/LXC numa info
BuildRequires: numactl-devel
%endif

%if %{with_numad}
BuildRequires: numad
%endif

%if %{with_numad}
Requires: numad
%endif

If I understand correctly, configure needs to know the location of the numad binary, but also needs to link against the numactl libraries, in order for numa tuning to work.

Although numad support was first added added to 0.9.11, it won't work well unless we also backport the additional numad cleanups that are going into 0.9.12, ending with this commit:
commit b0f3244554b7b67183615a353897a2e19e0c6d68
Author: Osier Yang <jyang>
Date:   Wed May 9 12:22:58 2012 +0800

    numad: Check numactl-devel if compiled with numad support
    
    Since now we pre-set memory policy using libnuma to fully
    drive numad, it needs to check numactl-devel if "with_numad"
    is "yes".
    
    configure with groups "--with-numad=yes --with-numactl=yes",
    "--with-numad=no --with-numactl=yes", "--with-numad=yes
    --with-numactl=yes" works fine after the change.

libvirt-0.9.11.4-1.fc17 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 17.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt-0.9.11.4-1.fc17

Package libvirt-0.9.11.4-1.fc17:
* should fix your issue,
* was pushed to the Fedora 17 testing repository,
* should be available at your local mirror within two days.
Update it with:
# su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing libvirt-0.9.11.4-1.fc17'
as soon as you are able to.
Please go to the following url:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2012-9549/libvirt-0.9.11.4-1.fc17
then log in and leave karma (feedback).

libvirt-0.9.11.4-2.fc17 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 17.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt-0.9.11.4-2.fc17

libvirt-0.9.11.4-3.fc17 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 17.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt-0.9.11.4-3.fc17

libvirt-0.9.11.4-3.fc17 has been pushed to the Fedora 17 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.