Thanks for the example. Apt can be used to download a specific source version of something with the = parameter, which you probably know. In this case your example showed that one can't use apt to download versions from another (historic) Debian release.
apt-get source glibc=2.19-13 Reading package lists... Done E: Can not find version '2.19-13' of package 'glibc' E: Unable to find a source package for glibc If the version is available in a current release the commands `dget URL` and `apt-get source PACKAGE` results in same: $ find -maxdepth 2 ./apt ./apt/glibc_2.36.orig.tar.xz ./apt/glibc_2.36-9+deb12u3.debian.tar.xz ./apt/glibc-2.36 ./apt/glibc_2.36-9+deb12u3.dsc ./dget ./dget/glibc_2.19-13.debian.tar.xz ./dget/glibc_2.19.orig.tar.xz ./dget/glibc_2.19-13.dsc ./dget/glibc-2.19 Currently the dgit man page states at least twice that it is useful *because* apt can't be used for source downloads as a regular user. We should at least remove such false claims and add a useful example, such as that dget can be used to download old source packages if you happen to know the direct URL to the dsc file.