OpenShift Ingress is a core OpenShift operator responsible for managing ingress traffic. It currently installs Istio as the Gateway API implementation using the Sail Operator, which is deployed via OLM (Operator Lifecycle Manager).

This creates a problematic dependency: a core platform operator depends on a user-space operator. This leads to version ownership conflicts, lifecycle coupling, and upgrade complexity. When OpenShift ships a new version, it cannot guarantee the Istio version because Sail is managed separately through OLM.

This proposes changes to upstream Sail that enable the downstream OSSM (OpenShift Service Mesh) Operator to build a library that OpenShift Ingress can embed, bypassing OLM entirely. This makes the Gateway API implementation a true platform feature with predictable versioning.

Proposal: https://gist.github.com/aslakknutsen/faccb6bc6d9ecf551397831a1d64e54f
Working Branch: https://github.com/aslakknutsen/sail-operator/tree/sail_library_2