Hi, Former lighttpd maintainer here. I can give some background.
On Sun, Feb 02, 2025 at 04:36:37PM +0100, Marco Ricci wrote: > Version 1.4.76-1+b1 of lighttpd depends on systemd-sysv | lsb-base, but > version 1.4.77-1 of lighttpd depends only on systemd-sysv. This means > that version 1.4.77-1 transitively installs systemd, which is > incompatible with using a different init system such as runit > (sysvinit-utils + runit-init). > > I could not find any reason in the lighttpd upstream 1.4.77 changelog or > in the Debian changelog that would explain why lsb-base is no longer > a suitable alternative. Please re-add lsb-base/sysvinit-utils as an > alternative to systemd-sysv, or kindly add or point to such an > explanation. Thanks. A long time ago, lighttpd used to "Depends: lsb-base" as its init script sources some helper file. Back when I was a lighttpd maintainer, I added a systemd-sysv alternative to express that if you happen to run systemd, you don't need lsb-base, because you wouldn't use the init script. Now Glenn followed a lintian warning that states that lsb-base should be removed as obsolete. What he did was remove the alternative, but I think we could reasonably remove the entire dependency instead. Whilst lighttpd integrates with systemd, there are more ways to run it (e.g. in an application container it may be started directly). Other packages such as apache2 do not depend on systemd-sysv either. As a result, I recommend dropping the dependency. Helmut
