Maintaining software for different versions of Ubuntu

I have some software which is supposed to work on both Ubuntu 22 and Ubuntu 24. Due to some differences between the distributions, the software won't work properly on Ubuntu 24. What would be the industry best practice of maintaining such software? Would you have different repositories altogether? Would you use environment branches? On that note, how do well known applications, like for example postgres or docker, maintain their software in this regard and do their release management? Or do they not even worry about different Linux distros and the maintainers of the distros themselves package the software?

Apr 29, 2025 - 14:04

I have some software which is supposed to work on both Ubuntu 22 and Ubuntu 24. Due to some differences between the distributions, the software won't work properly on Ubuntu 24. What would be the industry best practice of maintaining such software? Would you have different repositories altogether? Would you use environment branches?

On that note, how do well known applications, like for example postgres or docker, maintain their software in this regard and do their release management? Or do they not even worry about different Linux distros and the maintainers of the distros themselves package the software?