I cloned the Master branch, initiated and checked-out the submodules, build with release-deployment target, created a package with pkg-posix target and installed the 1.89 version.
./oolite.app/oolite: /home/dybal/GNUstep/Applications/Oolite/oolite-deps/lib/libz.so.1: version `ZLIB_1.2.9' not found (required by /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16)
Erk. It looks like Oolite died with an error. When making an error
report, please copy + paste the log above into the report.
(Press Ctrl-C to continue)
Now, oolite-deps has libpng14.so.14, so I think the libpng16 from my distro (LinuxMint 19.3) was linked to the oolite binary.
I reconstructed the linux builds so they run automatically on GitHub. However only lately I really tried the 1.91 prerelease on a freshly installed Ubuntu 22 LTS. Oolite 1.91 fails with a similar error message.
demo@OoliteDemo:~/GNUstep/Applications/Oolite-trunk/oolite.app$ ./oolite
./oolite: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
demo@OoliteDemo:~/GNUstep/Applications/Oolite-trunk/oolite.app$
demo@OoliteDemo:~/GNUstep/Applications/Oolite-trunk$ ./oolite-trunk
./oolite.app/oolite: error while loading shared libraries: libgnustep-base.so.1.28: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Erk. It looks like Oolite-trunk died with an error. When making an error
report, please copy + paste the log above into the report.
demo@OoliteDemo:~/GNUstep/Applications/Oolite-trunk$
So there is something not right. I will try to tweak/apply your fix.