Usually mixing zlib versions has been relatively safe, as long as the library is newer than the headers used, but after 1.2.11 there has been quite a lot of changes that can cause unexpected behaviour.

As said, zlib 1.2.11 is quite old, so recompiling everything from source packages (instead of using binary packages) might be best option currently.

I've had some experience with mixing and matching dependencies and source packages from different "eras" and generally they work with small additional patching.

zlib library version does not match - header: 1.2.11

This error makes it seem like it would barf at any version that is not 1.2.11, including newer 1.2.13.

I'm installing the latest texlive (binary release) in a prefix which is potentially built against a newer zlib, we'll see how it goes.

zlib library version does not match - header: 1.2.11

This error makes it seem like it would barf at any version that is not 1.2.11, including newer 1.2.13.

Sadly this is the future as a lot of projects don't bump up major version number when there is a breaking change, so any program or library that use the project as dependency must require exact version instead of comparing just the major (and possibly minor) version.

In ideal world, minor version would be bumped when a new function is added to API/ABI and major version would be bumped if function signature is changed, or function is deprecated and removed from API/ABI, or class or struct is modified beyond adding new function or member variable to end of public section.