How to make packages cross different Ubuntu release?

Question

I'm the author of some software , which depends on libxx6 (In ubuntu 11.10) , but in 12.04 , the package become libxx7 (7 is not a Ubuntu version number) , so the dependency become a problem.

How can i work this out ? I'm managing a PPA , and i want to fix that before release of Ubuntu 12.04.

Thanks !

Answer 1

If there is a generic version-free package you can depend on (such as in the Java case: java-runtime vs. e.g. java6-runtime), depend on that. If there isn't, you have to make specialized packages for the different versions of Ubuntu. Look at the package you depend on's control file and see if it Provides something more generic you can depend on.

Answer 2

If the same source will build on all the releases, then it's very easy. You build (upload) it separately for each Ubuntu release. You'll have to use slightly different version numbers, I suggest appending ~releasename1

Answer 3

Assuming that your package will compile against both libxx6 and libxx7, simply us libxx-dev in the Build-Depends field of you debian/control file. Then in the Depends field us ${shlibs:Depends}. This will automatically be substituted with the version of the shared library that your package was built against.

More detailed information about shared libraries can be found in Chapter 8 of the Debian Policy Manual.