Posted by cleeland on Thu 6 Oct 2005 at 12:17
I'm trying to figure out the best way to install two versions of a library .deb concurrently. I know how to do this with rpm, but can't figure out a way to do this with dpkg. I've looked at dpkg-divert, but that makes me specify each individual file, so it's kind of a pain. Plus, I would have to set up the diversion, install one, then remove the diversion, then install the other, so my system would still only think that I had one version installed.To be more specific, I am saddled with running an old version of a piece of commercial software that does not work with the latest-and-greatest glibc (2.3.5+). The most recent version I *know* works is 2.3.2.ds1-22. I know this because I actually let apt-get upgrade my libc recently, and that commercial software broke. I had to step back to 2.3.2.ds1-22.
Another ideas I've had is to move the 2.3.2.ds1-22 version of the library into a different directory, and wrap my commercial software with a script that uses LD_LIBRARY_PATH to insure that the different directory gets searched first. I know it'll work, but it's hacky, and still doesn't address my system's notion of what, exactly, is installed.
Please--no rants against the commercial software. There is no viable open-source alternative to it.
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