Run-time library dependency (outdated) and installed library versions do not match - Linux

Question

Recently I got a new problem: my system cannot find libplacebo.so.208, but simply because the current version is newer.

This is my currently installed version of the package libplacebo:

$ ls -l /usr/lib/libplacebo*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     17  2 jan 18:47 /usr/lib/libplacebo.so -> libplacebo.so.229
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 768840  2 jan 18:47 /usr/lib/libplacebo.so.229

Many softwares (ffmpeg, zzzfm, ...) will only look after the version 208:

$ ldd /usr/local/bin/zzzfm
        [...]
        libplacebo.so.208 => not found
        [...]

Why does it behave like this? These packages/programs worked like a charm even yesterday, and I update all my packages daily. I tried to reinstall libplacebo, without any change. It is quite strange, since it seems like every package having a dependency on libplacebo is now unable to find it.

The only trick working I found is to create a symbolic link from libplacebo.so.208 to libplacebo.so. I find it a bit dirty, and would like to know why there is this version mismatch and if I can do anything about that (except creating the symlink like already said).

Could I have broke some things?

Answer 1

If that is the only application that you are using that requires that version if the library, then it's fine.

If you want to be extra safe, then you can compile libplacebo 228 from source and add the directory containing libplacebo.so.208 to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH by creating a file in /etc/ld.so.conf.d such as libplacebo.conf and then run ldconfig. That will have the particular library available immediately and at login.