I am upgrading a legacy mac OS X build environment (C++ code) and trying to find the 'right way' to handle third parties libraries (all of them are open source libraries). We currently support multiple mac OS x versions which use (dynamic link) each OS version's default third parties libraries (located at /usr/lib) it causes compatibility errors and therefore I look for a better way to do it.
On windows environment we use a redistributable package similar to the visual studio's version to prevent such errors, I did not find anything similar here.
Solutions I have in mind are compile them manually or take them from the MacOSX-SDK manually and use install_name_tool to enforce our dylibs and applications to use these libraries.
In the following link I found a similar solution: In Xcode, how do I link a dynamic library (libcurl) so that the app also works on older versions of the Mac OS?
But all of them 'smells' as a bad idea.