How to run software that depends on a legacy library, the Debian way?

Question

i want to keep using Opera v12.16, the last Version before their switch to Chrome-based Opera.

This has a dependency chain:

• opera v12.16.1860
  • gstreamer0.10-plugins-good v0.10.31-3+nmu4+deb8u2
    • libtag1c2a v1.9.1-2.1
      • libtag1-vanilla v1.9.1-2.1

Nowadays many packages dearly want libtag1v5, which conflicts with libtag1c2a. I made do with holding opera and not updating packages where the new versions depended on libtag1v5, 44 at the moment.

Apparently, libtag1c2a is some kind of metapackage without binary, libtag1-vanilla looks like the library binary.

I did read How to run software that requires legacy library version? and found out that i could in principle extract and copy needed libraries somewhere and point the opera binary there to find them at start. This doesn't remove the cited dependency hierarchy, though, and is thus no solution, if i want to keep using APT packaging.

I could possibly make a Frankenpackage by removing the libtag1c2a dependency from the gstreamer0.10-plugins-good .deb file.

I'm aware of chroot, lxd, openvz and the like, and believe them to be much too much hassle because of one single library (/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtag.so.1.14.0); and especially with Opera's need to access ~/.opera.

Is there possibly a better way to achieve old Opera together with an update-friendly Debian?

Many thanks in advance for your ideas & suggestions.

Answer 1

i found a solution of sorts:

Remove opera and its 3 subsequent dependent packages from above, then install from opera-12.16-1860.x86_64.linux.tar.bz2, which includes its own gstreamer library.

In effect, this means relying on the Package provider to also offer this more self-contained, APT-independent package version. Luckily this is usually the case.

After that, there were no further roadblocks to dist-upgrade-ing.

Problem kinda solved and System mostly re-Debianized, though without assistance.