Hi Folks, sorry for taking so long to answer.
In first place, this issue is not new, it has happened not so long ago. This is because the folks Debian are using an unreleased version of the software in the official distro.
As of March 19th, 2012, libUPnP 1.8.0 still does not exist. You can use it, of course, but please realize that you are on your own. The last release of libUPnP is 1.6.17.
Morph, the transition you mention is happening for years. Unfortunately, as in any open source project, we lack developers in libUPnP. This particular branch of the software is, as far as I know, untested. At least, no one has reported back to the developers that he/she is using 1.8.0 reliably. We get zero error reports on it and tons of error reports on 1.6.x, which has been under active development recently, mostly bug fixes.
I make sure that any bug fix applied to 1.6.x is also applied to 1.8.0 if it makes sense.
On the other hand, we might get something useful of this situation. If libUPnP 1.8.0 has been in use in Debian, it would be nice if someone told me what software is linking against it, and if you use any patch to pass it upstream. If I have reports of users and developers linking against it without problems, I'll gladly release the beast.
The whole point of 1.8.0 is to isolate the internal structures of the library, so that the developers can work without breaking the library API, which is a pain in the ass, as any distro maintainer knows.
Another point is that changing aMule to work with (the inexistent
) libUPnP 1.8.0 is likely to be very easy. I really currently have no resources to look into this right, sorry, but I am available to help someone willing to do it.
Chrees!