Backporting software

[Carsten Aulbert]

Hi,

I want to backport some software (kphotoalbum) along with the needed
libraries. So far so bad. Of course, I could compile stuff by hand and
install to /usr/local, but since I know myself good enough, in the end
/usr/local will end up in a sorry state after a few months and I'll get
lost, how to uninstall stuff again.

In the past I have used one of the GNU tools for installing things
safely (sorry, forgot the name), but that didn't work out all the time.

Thus, I'd lie to build .deb packages.

I'm no stranger to pbuild, reprepro or other ways of building packages
and maintaining a small extra repository, however, as soon as I cannot
find a proper source packages (orig.tar.gz, dsc file and patch), I feel
completely lost.

Is there a simple way to do the backporting myself? I.e. some generic
and fast way to grab the upstream version, create a generic debian
directory with a easy rules file and let the thing compile and build
packages?

Thanks for any brief answer to that

Cheers

Carsten