[Buildroot] dpkg and apt for buildroot?

[Mark Mason <mason+buildroot@postdiluvian.org>]

Has anyone already done the footwork to add dpkg and apt (at least a
secure apt-get, I'm not sure what other dependancies there are)?

I ran across some mail from July 2013 with patches for dpkg, which
were very close to working, but I didn't see any for apt.  I'm kind of
surprised that apt and friends aren't an option - am I about to run
into something unexpectedly complicated, or is complex package
management like apt/dpkg provides just generally outside of
buildroot's scope?

While I'm at it, almost all of the traffic on this list is related to
development of buildroot rather than development with buildroot.  Is
there a better place for questions (after the documentation and web
searches have not provided answers), or is this it?