libjpeg is silly, but that's why everyone uses libjpeg-turbo now, which maintains API/ABI compatibility with libjpeg v8 http://www.libjpeg-turbo.org/About/Jpeg

libjpeg is silly, but that's why everyone uses libjpeg-turbo now, which maintains API/ABI compatibility with libjpeg v8 http://www.libjpeg-turbo.org/About/Jpeg-9 http://www.libjpeg-turbo.org/About/Jpeg-9 And if it comes to having a library or two with two ABIs/APIs, like gtk2 and gtk3, or libjpeg7 and libjpeg8, that's not a big deal - those two lines have different "sonames", and it's just those two versions to manage globally, rather than a per-app multitude.