Arch Linux

Description:
Currently, a lot of packages *depend* on systemd when they only require *udev*.

This causes a bit of hell when udev is built separately from systemd.
My initial reason for posting this is that I'm using Arch Linux packages everywhere, not only as the "running system", but also in chroots or other containers, and this makes it almost impossible to manage, at least cleanly.

But regardless, that would be a general dependency cleanliness improvement.
If at some time it's not the systemd package that provides udev anymore, the transition will happen with no hassle if everything depends on the virtual dependency "udev".

Some packages already use the udev dependency: libatasmart and libgusb in [core] do.

We already do that with libgl, which can be provided by mesa-libgl, libgl-switcheroo, nvidia-libgl, etc.
It's really convenient when building a custom package for the functionality!


Current relevant packages and apparent strongest reason:
core/device-mapper (links to libudev)
core/libusb (links to libudev)
extra/lighttpd (doesn't need to depend on systemd at all)
core/lvm2 (links to libudev)
extra/mesa (links to libudev)
core/pcmciautils (provides an udev rule)
extra/subversion (doesn't need to depend on systemd at all)
extra/xf86-input-evdev (links to libudev)

These packages clearly don't need systemd, only udev.
subversion and lighttpd seem to need no systemd dependency: they merely provide service units.
Does providing an udev rule warrant a dependency to udev, for pcmciautils?