Gil Citro wrote:
[...] Also, it doesn't explain how to check a mirror before installing the local copy of the package. I guess I could install the local copy and the do an update from a mirror, but I'm guessing that's also not the best way. [...]
Aptitude will do this automatically for you. If you have multiple sources in your sources.list, aptitude will download from the source that has the latest version of the package.