This issue can be solved by extracting the "interface" and using that as the input. So for a shared library the interface may be all exported symbols. If that c

This issue can be solved by extracting the "interface" and using that as the input. So for a shared library the interface may be all exported symbols. If that changes in any way you should rebuild the dependencies (to be cautious). I think the ideal way to do this is to make a "dummy" library with the same interface and expose that to the build of the other program. That way you know it doesn't depend on anything else. Of course there are complexities: - What if the library is called in the build. Maybe the shim can proxy back to the original? But now you risk it depending on something. For tests proxying may make sense for build maybe not. - For Nix you still want to produce a new output that is hardcoded to the new library version. You can skip the compile, but you still need to update the references.