Dependencies for packages exposing OpenSSL binary interface to Perl code ======================================================================== This information is only relevant for maintainers of Debian packages of Perl XS modules dealing with OpenSSL. Packages exposing libssl binary objects like SSL_CTX struct pointers to Perl code need to be compiled against the same version of OpenSSL to avoid binary incompatibility issues. See . Compatibility can be ensured by depending on the "perl-openssl-abi-x" virtual package, where the name is dynamically generated from the SONAME of the libssl.so symlink included in the libssl-dev package. There can be only one such package on the system at a time, so this guarantees that all the installed packages share the same compatibility level. To generate this dependency, please build-depend on perl-openssl-defaults and do one of the following: debhelper using dh: Use the "perl_openssl" addon and ensure ${perl:Depends} is used in debian/control. The debian/rules file might look as follows: #!/usr/bin/make -f %: dh $@ --with perl_openssl Alternatively, since perl-openssl-defaults/4 you can just build depend on dh-sequence-perl-openssl and omit the "--with perl_openssl" part. old-style debhelper: Run dh_perl_openssl after dh_perl and ensure ${perl:Depends} is used in debian/control. packages not using debhelper: Include /usr/share/perl-openssl-defaults/perl-openssl.make in debian rules and use PERL_OPENSSL_ABI_VERSION.