If you checkout a release tag frm CVS or download the release tarball (although I guess we alredy found bugs in that..) You should be fine.
If you try to upgrade one package, it looks like something is broken in a more recent dotlrn.
What version of dotlrn is in packages/dotlrn/dotlrn.info currently?
The APM should not let you install incompatible versions but in this case it thinks its compatible, but there is a bug.
