advanced packaging tool

if you’ve used Debian for more than a week, you’ve typed apt-get without thinking; that’s the point.

APT is the front end over dpkg — a simpler, safer way to install and upgrade packages than wrestling the lower-level tools by hand. the SCM history lived at https://alioth.debian.org/anonscm/git/apt/apt.git; around the time i wrote this, Release 1.3~rc4 was the latest in the logs.

sometimes you still need an rpm on a Debian box; compatibility is messy, but alien gets you most of the way:

apt-get install alien
alien package.rpm  
dpkg -i package.deb

alien is available from the official repos, or you can build it from source. not elegant — but when you’re stuck between packaging worlds, elegance is optional.