linking against shared libraries

[Rainer Gerhards]

Hi all,

my apologies if this is the wrong list for my question. If so, I would
appreciate if you could point me to the correct one.

I am trying to build a program so that it does not refer to shared
libraries by their version-specific name but rather a generic one. My
intent is to use checkinstall to generate packages.

As a concrete example, I use some basic openssl functionality that is
available in both newer and older versions of the library (without any
ABI issues). In essence, it does not matter if 0.9.x or 1.0.x is used.
However, after my program is built, the exact version number seems to
be required. So if I build on an older system and move the binary over
to the newer one, the new one complains that 0.9.x is not available
(which is fine with me, because 1.0.x does nicely). And vice versa for
the other direction.

I am banging my head on this for quite a while now and would
appreciate any help (and, yes, I know I probably miss something
essential, but I don't know how to find that missing piece...).

Thanks,
Rainer