On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 10:52:37PM +0000, Jonathan Dowland wrote: > The best way to achieve this is to use backports, if one exists for the > packages you are interested in. > > Failing that, it's possible that the version of the package in testing or > unstable can be installed on your stable system without pulling in any (or too > many) dependencies from outside stable.
No, stop. The second step if there is not already a backport is to try to backport it yourself. Maybe ask judd in IRC first, whether a backport is believed to be *possible*. Sometimes the bot is wrong, but it's a starting point. If judd thinks all the dependencies are satisfiable, then you can try the backport. If a backport isn't possible, I would actually prefer to build the package normally from upstream source code (./configure; make; sudo make install) than to install a binary from testing/unstable onto stable.
