Debian Fast Forward: An alternative backports repository

The Debian project releases a new stable version of its Linux distribution approximately every two years. During its life time, a stable release usually gets security updates only, but in general no feature updates.

For some packages it is desirable to get feature updates earlier than with the next stable release. Some new packages included in Debian after the initial release of a stable distribution are desirable for stable too.

Both use-cases can be solved by recompiling the newer version of a package from testing/unstable on stable (aka backporting). Packages are backported together with only the minimal amount of required build-depends or depends not already fulfilled in stable (if any), and without any changes unless required to fix building on stable (if needed).

There are official Debian Backports available, as well as several well-known unofficial backports repositories. I have been involved in one of these unofficial repositories since 2005 which subsequently turned 2010 into its own Debian derivative, mixing both backports and modified packages in one repository for simplicity.

Starting with the Debian 13 (trixie) release, the (otherwise unmodified) backports of this derivative have been split out from the derivative distribution into a separate repository. This way the backports are more accessible and useful for all interested Debian users too.