Binary Compatibility question

[Edwin <edwin bathysphere org>]

Hi,

Fairly recently I updated my app to run under Gnome 2.x. I distributed a
source .tar.gz and a binary i386 RPM (generated under RedHat 8.0 & Gnome
2.0). Then I found that the RPM doesn't install on Mandrake 9.2 (which
uses Gnome 2.4), even though I'd installed all the Gnome components. The
problem was that I had a dependency on liblinc.so.1 (via Orbit). I
understand that's no longer required by Gnome 2.4, so the Mandrake box
understandably didn't have it. When I recompiled on the Mandrake box,
everything worked fine.

My question is, broadly, how can I achieve the widest compatibility for
my RPMs?

More specifically: 
Is this a general binary compatibility problem between earlier Gnome
2.x's and 2.4? Should I create separate packages for 2.4 systems? Are
there any problems between 2.0 and 2.2?

Thanks,
-
Edwin