Packrat, thanks for the info you found on your search. So, a bit of confession here, I have been playing around with alternative search engines, and my current one is Unbubble. Not bad, better than many but just not quite as good as Duckduckgo, Google, Bing, etc. So, perhaps that's why I didn't come across the errors you found.
I installed everything via apt from Debian SID repos. No git, just apt. I have probably had cwm and compton since December or February, 5-6 months. When I disable compton, the reported terminal warnings about wm errors go away. I don't run tint2 so not sure how cwm etc would behave with it.
apt-cache policy compton :( v79%
compton:
Installed: 0.1~beta2-1
Candidate: 0.1~beta2-1
Version table:
*** 0.1~beta2-1 0
500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
apt-cache policy cwm :( v79%
cwm:
Installed: 5.6-4
Candidate: 5.6-4
Version table:
*** 5.6-4 0
500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status