After fighting off and on for over a month to get a series of `apt install`s cached for testing... #TIL that while every single thing I've seen for "how to download all stuff apt will install" suggests stuff like "apt install --download-only" (does not download dependencies), "try apt-rdepends" (does not match apt-install list), or "try apt-cache depends" (also does not match apt-install, in different ways) or "lol no"... ...there actually IS a simple solution! `apt satisfy --download-only pkg` Which gives me *exactly* the same list of .deb files to download as `apt install pkg` says it needs to install. No grep or awk or "WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface" concerns needed. Of course this is not documented anywhere that I can see. This is apt after all. I just tried it because `apt satisfy pkg` output looked remarkably like `apt install pkg`.