For the last couple of days I played a bit more with apt. This time, the goal was to setup a local repository. There are two excellent documents which together cover everything there is to it: FreshRPM’s guide to setting up an apt server and this Red Hat apt Repository HOWTO. I’ve managed to setup repositories with Red Hat 8.0 and 9 operating systems, updates for them, and appropriate FreshRPMs archives for them. All that is now needed is extensive testing. :)