Like my earlier post on installing the Oracle 10g client on Ubuntu, when I came to install SQL Developer on 8.10 I couldn’t find a complete list of instructions so I thought I’d write my own.

First we need to get the rpm from Oracle:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/sql/index.html

Now we need a few things before we install it:

sudo apt-get install lsb sun-java6-jre alien

We’re ready now to build the .deb package and install:

sudo alien --scripts sqldeveloper.rpm
sudo dpkg -i sqldeveloper.deb

Finaly we need to tell SQL Developer where to find our JDK, mine went into /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.10/ so:

echo "/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.10/" > ~/.sqldeveloper/jdk

SQL Developer should now be installed in the Applications menu under Programing.