help me with backporting transmission?

[oumuamua]

https://packages.debian.org/testing/net ... ion-daemon
buster dependencies:
https://packages.debian.org/buster/libevent-2.1-6
https://packages.debian.org/buster/libminiupnpc17
https://packages.debian.org/buster/libnatpmp1

I am an advanced beginner level linux user. I just want to install transmission-daemon 2.94 on an OpenVZ 6 (2.6.32 kernel) VPS with Debian Stretch Minimal 64 bit installed.

I already tried following https://wiki.debian.org/SimpleBackportCreation but it failed at mk-build-deps every time. The buster dependencies don't seem to have any subdependencies except for libnatpmp1 which seems to require libc6 2.27 (listed as 2.7 but whatever). Note that any version of libc6 after 2.25 is not compatible with OpenVZ's 2.6 kernel anymore.

I am not sure if this means I cannot install transmission-daemon 2.94 on that VPS at all or if I just cannot compile it on the VPS machine. I tried to do this on the VPS itself which I now think was my first mistake. My plan is to try to do the actual backporting on my home machine first and then try to use the result on the VPS if I can. Should I install Stretch or Buster at home? BTW I cannot just upgrade the VPS to buster because of the old kernel glibc problem (and probably others as well).

If that libc6 2.27 dependency is a problem for compiling/building is it also a problem for just pulling this package from testing as a binary for a FrankenDebian system? Would it try to install libc6/buster in order to install libnatpmp1 in order to install transmission or is that c library just necessary to compile transmission and aptitude would not look for it?

I also want to ask about the dsc control file. For transmission it is the same file for every subpackage including transmission-cli, transmission-common, transmission-gtk, transmission-qt etc. I think that is why when I tried to run mk-build-deps it was trying to install qt and gtk and xorg libraries on my minimal cli system. So maybe I should be thinking in terms of making my own dsc file just for transmission-daemon itself which of course I would need help with too.

[stevepusser]

Some package names and versions have changed between Stretch and Buster, I would have to guess. Hmmm--no, not really, but it does need a little tweaking.

Here's a repo with successful backports to both Stretch and Jessie bases by some crazy backporter. You can download the debian tarball for MX 17 (stretch base) to see how those build-deps were handled in debian/control.

http://mxrepo.com/mx/testrepo/pool/test/t/transmission/

Take a look at debian/changelog to see what the backporter did. I'm not sure what your problem is with libnatpmp-dev (>= 20110808) is, it's in the main Stretch repo. When you compile against the Stretch version, it will be compatible with Stretch.

Don't worry about the dsc file, it only contains digital signatures. You really don't even need it if you have the debian and the orig tarballs. The package building process recreates a .dsc file, anyway. One build creates all the different debs, which is why you have one .dsc file.

If you want, you could take the MX 17 three source files and upload them to the openSUSE build service, which will also build them and set up a repo for just those packages, too. That same crazy backporter wrote a guide here on how to use the OBS to do that.