Introducing...  libapt-pkg-perl

APT has two libraries: libapt-pkg and libapt-inst.  The first of these deals with:

Configuration file/command line parsing*.
Version comparisons*.
Package* and source caches.
Policy engine (pinning).
File acquisition.
World domination¹.

The second exhibits unwarranted chumminess with the internals of the Debian packaging format.

The Perl interface (libapt-pkg-perl) currently deals with those items marked with an asterix above.

Access to the source cache and policy engine may be added in a future revision.  Acquisition may be handled by other methods (such as LWP) if required.

¹Just kidding.