is the apt version in tsting (0.5.3) reliable?

[Faheem Mitha <faheem@email.unc.edu>]

Dear People,

I am currently running Debian 2.2rs (potato, stable). I'm opting for
building packages from (Debian) sources for things I need that are not in
potato. The version of apt in testing has some functions that would make
this much easier (apt-get build-dep) and it generally has more
functionality than the version of apt (0.3.19) in potato. I am sure there
are many people out there who are using this version of apt, so my
question is, have you had any problems with it? More specifically, are
there any people currently using it on potato, and how has the experience
been?

Apt is a pretty basic thing, and I would rather stick with 0.3.19 if there
was any question of it misbehaving and blowing things up. I looked at the
bug reports for this version of apt, and they seemed pretty alarming,
though I am not sure I understand the workings of the bug system all that
well. For one thing, how come so many reports seem to go unresolved? Am I
missing something, are these spurious reports, or what? I like a stable
and smoothly running installation, which is why I am running stable :-).

Thanks for any responses. 

                             Sincerely, Faheem Mitha.