The way the system I worked on "solved it" was to provide another layer of constraints called "incorporations" that effectively constrained the allowed versions

The way the system I worked on "solved it" was to provide another layer of constraints called "incorporations" that effectively constrained the allowed versions used to resolve dependencies to a version that was delivered for a given OS build. Administrators could selectively disable those constraints for some packages, at which point resolution was solely based on the "standard" dependencies. But by default, dependencies would "resolve as expected". The "incorporate" dependencies are described here: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E21383/dependtypes.html#gluna https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E21383/dependtypes...