Debian: what's the difference between "apt source" and "dget"?

Question

There are multiple ways to download the source package -*.dsc (Debian Source Control) file. For example:

• apt source xxx
• dget xxx
• git clone (not related to this question)

What's the difference between "apt source" and "dget"?

Answer 1

apt source foo will find the source package providing the foo binary package, download it, and extract it to the current directory. (See the apt-get manpage for details.)

dget foo will download the foo binary package to the current directory. It doesn’t download the source package.

When given a URL, dget downloads the corresponding file; additionally, if the downloaded file is a .dsc or .changes file, it will download the other files referenced there, and extract the resulting source package.