And here's another variant, from my approx package: debian/control: Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${F:OCamlRun}, adduser, bzip2, curl debian/rules: OCAMLABI = $(shell ocamlc -version) BYTECODE = $(shell [ -x /usr/bin/ocamlopt ] || echo yes) OCAMLRUN = $(if $(BYTECODE),ocaml-base-nox-$(OCAMLABI)) ... binary-arch: ... dh_gencontrol -- -VF:OCamlRun="$(OCAMLRUN)" -- Eric Cooper e c c @ c m u . e d u