Any1 Familliar with smartpm instead of dpkg?

Hi All: Since my package manager is broken, I looked around packages.debian.org. 
Found an alternative, which in its involved description, seems to handle 
dependancies much better than the usual tools.
It is called "smartpm" but runs as "smart"
So I did the usual configure, make, make install. I have version 1..4 but for 
some reason it only is aware of packages I already have, if I try-and-as an 
example
smart install lynx
Says no matching packages. Just about all its bug reports are no newer than 
2011, but even so, is their something else I need to do to point at repos? 
Thanks so much in advance
Hart