[layer8]

I don’t know. My concept for reproducibility with Debian is a backup of /etc and the list of installed packages (the output of `dpkg --get-selections`). It’s also not difficult to diff one’s /etc with a pristine version, though I haven’t actually needed that in many years.

[__MatrixMan__]

If that scratches the itch, great. Backups of /etc can't be combined in a way that lets you reliably uncombine them later though, so you're going to be limited in how modular you can make it.

[layer8]

That’s true, though using version control with branches and merges can get you pretty far.

[OscarCunningham]

I believe 'dpkg --get-selections' lists all packages, not just the ones the user installed. So if I installed some package foo that had a dependency bar, this method would have me carrying around bar even if foo updated to stop depending on it.

[layer8]

You are right. In that case, apt-clone is better, though not universally available.