I wonder why this wouldn't work: Depends: libthing4 | libthing5 | libthing6 I personally would have just created a package for the software and used dh_shlibdeps as per normal. If that doesn't work and you actually want the libraries as dependencies of a metapackage, I would not add a new field but just add the right libraries to the ${shlibs:Depends} substvar. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise