Due to #776912 I tried to debootstrap without systemd:

debootstrap --arch=amd64 --variant=minbase --include=sysvinit-core \
	--exclude=systemd,systemd-sysv jessie jessie

However systemd gets still pulled in by incorrectly resolving init
pre-depends:
(...)
 init pre-depens on systemd-sysv | sysvinit-core | upstart
  systemd-sysv is not installed.
  sysvinit-core is not installed.
  upstart is not installed.
(...)
Selecting previously unselected package systemd.
(...)
Rest is in #776912.

The manpage states wrt --include "Comma  separated  list  of  packages  which
will be added to download and extract lists.", however sysvinit-core doesn't
show up at all in the debootstrap.log besides above mentioned init pre-depends
message.

Yours Martin

Hi Martin,

Martin Wuertele <maxx@debian.org> (2015-02-03):

This is getting fixed by adjusting the minimal set of packages instead,
so closing this bug report. See Ansgar's initial mail:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2015/05/msg00156.html

Mraw,
KiBi.

reopen -1
retitle -1 cannot switch init to sysvinit
thanks

Fixing #992916 ([1]) was made more complicated by the fact that this
bug still exists in debootstrap. On sid, if I use the following
command, the chroot ends up with both sysvinit and systemd packages
installed.

sudo debootstrap --arch=amd64 --include=sysvinit-core --exclude=systemd,systemd-sysv,systemd-timesyncd --components=main --verbose sid chroot http://deb.debian.org/debian/

$ sudo chroot chroot dpkg --list | grep systemd
ii  libsystemd0:amd64        247.9-1                      amd64        systemd utility library
ii  systemd                  247.9-1                      amd64        system and service manager
ii  systemd-timesyncd        247.9-1                      amd64        minimalistic service to synchronize local time with NTP servers
$ sudo chroot chroot dpkg --list | grep sysv
ii  sysv-rc                  2.96-7                       all          System-V-like runlevel change mechanism
ii  sysvinit-core            2.96-7                       amd64        System-V-like init
ii  sysvinit-utils           2.96-7                       amd64        System-V-like utilities

I had to spend significant additional time implementing a hack based
upon [2] to get around this.

Re-opening - It's been ~5 years since this was closed upon a basis that
a separate bit of work was being undertaken that would supposedly solve
it. I have not had the time to investigate what happened to that work,
but it clearly has not worked out in some way. A perfect demonstration
of why bugs should not be closed under such circumstances.

[1]: https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/merge_requests/257
[2]: https://www.notinventedhere.org/articles/linux/debootstrapping-debian-jessie-without-systemd.html

In Buster+ libsystemd0 gets pulled in but other than that it seems to
work okay. Is this fixed?