Installing BinDiff on Linux Mint 14

I recently upgraded my system to Linux Mint 14 and went about re-installing all my software. When I got to Zynamics/Google BinDiff, I found I had an issue:

$ sudo dpkg -i bindiff401-debian50-amd64.deb

Selecting previously unselected package bindiff.
Unpacking bindiff (from bindiff401-debian50-amd64.deb) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of bindiff:
 bindiff depends on sun-java6-jre; however:
  Package sun-java6-jre is not installed.

Unfortunately, BinDiff requires sun-java6-jre, which is not in the Linux Mint repository, nor any other repository I could find. I could circumvent this by installing BinDiff by using the --ignore-depends=sun-java6-jre option to dpkg. However, every time I went to install updates I would get an error message that BinDiff was broken, and be prompted to uninstall it before I could continue.

However, I found a work-around - create a dummy package named sun-java6-jre using the tool equivs. (There are some docs out there on this, but I was unable to find a non-Google cached copy, so here was what I did.)

Linux Mint has equivs in its repository, so if its not already installed, apt-get it.

Next, run equivs-control sun-java6-jre and this will create a file named sun-java6-jre that you will need to modify.

At minimum, you'll need to uncomment and/or fill out the following fields:

• Package
• Version
• Maintainer

I also filled out the description fields so I would remember what it was.

After the file is modifoed, run equivs-build sun-java6-jre and you should see something similar to below:

$ equivs-build sun-java6-jre
dh_testdir
dh_testroot
dh_prep
dh_testdir
dh_testroot
dh_install
dh_installdocs
dh_installchangelogs
dh_compress
dh_fixperms
dh_installdeb
dh_gencontrol
dh_md5sums
dh_builddeb
dpkg-deb: building package `sun-java6-jre' in `../sun-java6-jre_6.0_all.deb'.

The package has been created.
Attention, the package has been created in the current directory,
not in ".." as indicated by the message above!

Once that has successfully completed, you should have a sun-java6-jre_6.0_all.deb file in your directory. If that failed, you probably forgot to modify one of the fields in the file.

Finally, just dpkg -i the new deb file and BinDiff, and you should be ready to go!

$ sudo dpkg -i sun-java6-jre_6.0_all.deb
Selecting previously unselected package sun-java6-jre.
(Reading database ... 237677 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking sun-java6-jre (from sun-java6-jre_6.0_all.deb) ...
Setting up sun-java6-jre (6.0) ...

$ sudo dpkg -i bindiff401-debian50-amd64.deb
Selecting previously unselected package bindiff.
(Reading database ... 237681 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking bindiff (from bindiff401-debian50-amd64.deb) ...
bindiff license has already been accepted
Setting up bindiff (4.0.1) ...

$

Then you are good to go!