On Wed, Dec 03, 2014 at 08:48:40AM +1100, yvesjv@??? wrote:
> Hi all,
>

>     Need some assistance with the removal of libsystemd0.

>

>     Followed the instructions provided at http://without-systemd.org/wiki

>

>     It of course removed gdm and some other files but installing slim
> fixed the login.

>

>     Next is apptemting to remove libsystemd0

>

>     apt-get remove libsystemd0  appears to want remove a HUGE number of
> packages of my Debian xfce installation and has that warning in there
> too

>

>     WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed.
> This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
>  bsdutils libsystemd0 (due to bsdutils)

>

>     Is there a safe way to remove/replace libsystemd0 and
> libsystemd-shim?

You have two options.

One, force-remove bsdutils and symlink to busybox for every binary it
would provide.

You might want to build some sort of package along the lines of:
Depends: busybox | busybox-static
Provides: bsdutils
Conflicts: bsdutils, libsystemd0
Priority: important
Essential: yes

if you do take that course.
I'm *not* sure that the above will do exactly the right thing.

The second option, which I did yesterday, is
-fetch the util-linux source
-delete the systemd/libsystemd-dev dependencies from debian/control,
and the systemd references from debian/rules and debian/*.install.
-install all other build-dependencies.
(Leaving dh-systemd doesn't drag any other bits of systemd in, FWIW.)
-Run debian/rules build && fakeroot debian/rules binary

The source from the above is in the devuan-2.25 branch here:
https://github.com/idunham/util-linux

Hope this helps,
Isaac Dunham