I've done this manually and had it work in selective cases, but if apps don't know to ask for a specific version of a lib, it won't ever work. Example -- some people have a cow over what version of perl is installed... but libperl.so could easily be a symlink to libperl-5.so -> libperl-5.20.so <- libperl-5.20.1.so, At the same time, libperl.5.18.so and libperl 5.16.so could be present for apps to link tot he major version (usually libperl-5.X.so) that they need. For some reason some people have a bug up their bonnet and claim patch-level locking is necessary. Yet most of the time, (not all) I can point apps that think they have to have 5.18.1 or 5.20.1 all at a libperl.so which is a perl-5.16.3, and they work fine -- with the vital bit that the cpan-lib modules that have been pulled in are 'recompiled' (cpan manpage: -r Recompiles dynamically loaded modules with CPAN::Shell->recompile. ). Now I know that can be tedious, but giving the option to recompile is one way to keep things in sync -- but having those modules that requires a specific version -- LINK to the version they need. Instead, all the system app claim they have to link to libperl.so and then hardcode the patch-level into perl and all linkables. Microsoft solved this problem over 5 years ago using versioned libraries that are loaded side-by-side (it's not a case of 1st version that gets loaded blocks other versions (as used to be the case either preVista or preWin7..) But now, they can support apps & games from 10 years ago -- with no recompile and no source. Can someone explain why opensuse can't do something similar? 10-15 years ago at SGI, they not only used dynamically loaded libs... but configured the gui pages with what menus to show based on the available dynamic libs! Very cool. So can someone explain why some of the OpnSus devs go crazy over compatibility subjects? You'd think compatibility was a 'bad word' or bad think to have, but it used to be considered a selling feature. So when and why did it become 'evil'? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org