Yeah that's what I meant. I also came across some script with redefinitions of C standard library functions that supposedly also allows you to link against older glibc symbols. I couldn't make it work.

Any half-decent SDK should allow you to trivially target an older platform version, but apparently doing trivial-seeming things without suffering is not The Linux Way™.

It's not straightforward and yes it should be easier, but it's also not rocket science. Containers have made it approachable for the average developer.