Editing APT (software) (section)

==History==
The original effort that led to the <code>apt-get</code> program was the <code>[[dselect]]</code> replacement project known by its codename ''Deity''.<ref name="d-u 1997-04">{{cite mailing list|url=https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1997/04/msg00786.html|title="dselect" replacement project ("deity")|first=Brian C.|last=White|mailing-list=deity@lists.debian.org|date=11 April 1997}}</ref> This project was commissioned in 1997 by Brian White, the Debian release manager at the time. The first functional version of <code>apt-get</code> was called <code>dpkg-get</code> and was only intended to be a test program for the core library functions that would underpin the new user interface (UI).<ref name="deity 1998-03">{{cite mailing list|url=https://lists.debian.org/deity/1998/03/msg00013.html|title=It's working|first=Jason|last=Gunthorpe|mailing-list=deity@lists.debian.org|date=2 March 1998}}</ref>

Much of the original development of APT was done on [[Internet relay chat]] (IRC), so records have been lost. The 'Deity creation team' mailing list archives include only the major highlights.

The 'Deity' name was abandoned as the official name for the project due to concerns over the religious nature of the name. The APT name was eventually decided after considerable internal and public discussion. Ultimately the name was proposed on IRC, accepted and then finalized on the mailing lists.<ref name="deity 1998-03 106">{{cite mailing list|url=https://lists.debian.org/deity/1998/03/msg00106.html|title=Re: 2 things (!)|first=Jason|last=Gunthorpe|mailing-list=deity@lists.debian.org|date=19 March 1998}}</ref>

APT was introduced in 1998 and original test builds were circulated on IRC. The first Debian version that included it was Debian 2.1, released on 9 March 1999.<ref>{{cite web|title=A brief history of Debian|url=https://debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-detailed.en.html#s4.1|publisher=debian.org|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030824115706/http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-detailed.en.html|archive-date=24 August 2003|language=en}}</ref>

In the end the original goal of the Deity project of replacing the <code>[[dselect]]</code> user interface was a failure. Work on the user interface portion of the project was abandoned (the user interface directories were removed from the [[Concurrent Versions System|concurrent versions system]]) after the first public release of <code>apt-get</code>. The response to APT as a <code>dselect</code> method and a command line utility was so great and positive that all development efforts focused on maintaining and improving the tool. It was not until much later that several independent people built user interfaces on top of <code>libapt-pkg</code>.

Eventually, a new team picked up the project, began to build new features and released version 0.6 of APT which introduced the Secure APT feature, using strong [[GNU Privacy Guard|cryptographic]] [[Digital signature|signing]] to authenticate the package repositories.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt|title=Secure APT|publisher=Debian Wiki|access-date=27 December 2021}}</ref>