Want a CLI interface to Transmission: transmission-remote, transmission-cli, transmission-remote-cli?

The Ubuntu 20.04 package transmission-cli says:

This package contains a (deprecated) stand-alone command-line client, transmission-remote to interface with transmission-daemon and tools to create, edit and inspect torrent files.

And indeed, looking at the transmission-cli package, I see it includes a /usr/bin/transmission-remote

On the other hand, the Transmission project github says:

Prior to development of transmission-remote, the standalone client transmission-cli was created. Limited to a single torrent at a time, transmission-cli is deprecated and exists primarily to support older hardware dependent upon it. In almost all instances, transmission-remote should be used instead.

So which is it? Is transmission-remote deprecated, or not? And what is it's relation to transmission-cli? In addition, looking on the web I find a transmission-remote-cli in 16.04, though it's not in the 20.04 repos.

I just want a CLI interface to Transmission so I can do some scripting. Can someone please clear up what I'm looking at here?

Edit: To put it simply, I'd like to get clear if the transmission-remote that the transmission project github page says replaced transmission-cli is the same as the transmission-remote in the Ubuntu 20.04 package named transmission-cli.

Solution 1:

transmission-cli is a very simple CLI utility with no TUI/Ncurses interface. It's for entering single commands that interact with the Transmission Daemon. This should be suitable for scripting purposes, but the package is deprecated.

transmission-remote is a CLI utility included in the Transmission package. Similar to transmission-cli, this should be suitable for scripting purposes, but this package is still updated.

transmission-remote-cli is a TUI (text user interface) application with an actual user interface for navigating and working with torrents. However, this package is also deprecated.

For more recent forks of a TUI package, you should look at one of these:

• stig - looks like development is ongoing, but is in alpha state
• tremc - looks like development is slow, but may be more stable

Solution 2:

The description of the package was written ten years ago. The text in the README, however, was added only four years ago. It's safe to say that the description needs to be updated. You might want to file a bug (probably with Debian as well) to get it updated and clarified.

Note that transmission-remote-cli is a separate project. The transmission README is talking about transmission-remote (source file utils/remote.c) from the same repo, which is indeed present in Ubuntu 20.04 (and other current versions).