Yes, that is indeed a possibility, though I'm not really sure about what I wanna do honestly, I'm actually thinking about reverting the two backported commits and just state to use dev if having issues. Although I seem to remember the one fix for PID creation was useful for something important, like starting the daemon of localhost from config manager, but have to go back and see why I did it in first place. Hmm, come to think of it, I now remember also adding a patch from Cas to both installers for getting GeoIP to work as needed as had stopped working, and a code change and another python package added which Cas stated in a reply to bug ticket about it. I did this by request, and because fixed a non-working function of deluge. There's several more fixes too, just not backported from develop branch and so added to both installers, which I too forgot take into equation , so for now will just let it be honestly I think, and I also stated I wouldn't mess around more with these installers, as probably not long until official release emerges anyway, though I really wanted newest gtk3 included and not old version, but we don't know how long anyway until the official release comes, and I honestly have a hard time not messing around with this little project from time to time, and just said such because I thought the official release was just around the corner, but we don't know that of course, and still doesn't hurt messing little around with this, even though won't be useful when official release comes.
Come to think about it, then many distros also add a **** load of patches for reported issues in there stable versioned releases. Though some state added git commits in addition to the release version in filename, but not all, and would be hard when a distro adds 4-5 or more patches, so maybe I'm just overthinking this, and not such a big deal anyway. Hmm, they then do what you suggested and add an internal version number additionally which does make sense. Actually that's always done I guess, no matter if patches added, atleast on arch-linux.
Your idea of installing dev for getting old torrents and then installing stable, was pretty smart thinking there, I'm sure it would work cannot see why not.
Tobbez also previously posted some python code to fix the old torrents getting through, but needs run from your deluge profile folder, or adding path to state, and have python installed obviously, or using deluge' s python, but I was thinking of making a little tool in exe format, just a 7z-sfx I think, that would do it when run, with embedded python and tobbez's script and some scripting on-top, e.g letting you select profile dir and then patch the state file from there, or simply assume it is under %appdata%/deluge, and not running with e.g several instances using different profiles or whatnot, but haven't looked into it yet. Ohh, I could add that python script to be run automatically at end of stable install, though then run every time you upgrade, though wouldn't hurt in reality. Hmm, I could add yet another checkbox under optional components during stable install, for running this code. That would be cool imho. So many ideers but no time to fulfill 'em all, lol
About blacklisted dev versions on private trackers, then I dunno but just remember some stating they couldn't use the beta Cas released some time ago because of that, but don't know how prevailant such is.
Thanks for bringing some good ideers to the table, appreciated mate
Edit: Upon further thought, much easier to simply backport said commit from develop branch and into 2.0.3, as important fix missing, so will do that when having time/motivation, maybe tomorrow, or day after at latest, I'm thinking atleast.