From: Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek on gitlab.com https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/merge_requests/1617#note_8469175...
I don't have any immediate use case in mind. This is more a matter of general principle: dependencies should only be declared if the package genuinely needs the dependency to function. People tend to use packages in unusual and innovative ways and we shouldn't have dependencies for things which would *usually* be used. Less dependencies == more flexibility.
Some contrived cases: a qemu image where the kernel is used externally (`qemu -kernel -initrd …`), and then you only need the modules in the guest, so you don't want kernel-install. Such cases would *usually* involve systemd in the image, but maybe if you're building an single-executable appliance, you don't have systemd there.
So maybe you're building a container with a qemu and single application isolated in a VM, and you want the kernel for the qemu in the container, but no systemd and no boot loader.
Or maybe you're trying to convert Fedora to runit or back to sysvinit, so you want to drop dependencies on systemd as much as possible ;)
As I said, I don't have a good use case, but I think the general principle is reasonable.