On Wed, 20 Jul 2016, Simon Hobson wrote:

> So, does anyone know if it's "hard" to use a library in a "see if
> it's there and don't use it if it isn't" way rather than "just use
> it and blow up if it's not there" which seems to be the norm ?


it is not hard at all. in fact one can simply dlopen(3)

AFAIK systemd even encourages this by publishing a .sym file within
its source, detailing changes across versions:
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/master/src/libsystemd/libsystemd.sym

ciao