title: How do you link to a specific version of a shared library in GCC
body: <p>I'm compiling some code which uses libcurl on a Debian Linux system. My dev machine is running Debian 5 but I want the binary to be usable on older Debian 4 systems too.</p>
  
  <p>I find that if I specify <strong>-lcurl</strong> it will link to libcurl.so.4 but Debian 4 systems only have libcurl.so.3</p>
  
  <p>Is there some way I can tell GCC to link to either libcurl.so.3 (which exists in both Debian 4 and 5) or just libcurl.so so it will use whatever version is available ?</p>