Install Oracle SQL Developer on Ubuntu (and Debian?)

install-oracle-sql-developer.md

Note

This was last updated for Ubuntu 24.04 and SQL Developer 26.

1. Go to the SQL Developer download page https://www.oracle.com/database/sqldeveloper/technologies/download/

   • Download the Linux version, which is only available as an RPM

2. Install alien and OpenJDK, e.g.

   sudo apt install alien openjdk-17-jdk
   

   👉 The version of the JDK required should be listed on the SQL Developer download page

   ⚠ For Debian, this may require alien >= 8.95.5. See this comment for more information.

3. Install SQL Developer

   Note: This might take several minutes

   sudo alien -i sqldeveloper-*.rpm
   

4. (Optional) Create a desktop entry

   echo "[Desktop Entry]
   Type=Application
   Name=Oracle SQL Developer
   Exec=sqldeveloper
   Icon=/opt/sqldeveloper/icon.png
   Terminal=false" >> ~/.local/share/applications/sqldeveloper.desktop
   

5. Start SQL Developer

   If you created a desktop entry, launch the Oracle SQL Developer application. Otherwise run sqldeveloper in a terminal.

6. (Optional) Disable the welcome page

   • If the welcome page shows, just scroll to the bottom and uncheck Show on startup
   • Otherwise, see here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/56484279/399105

7. (Optional) Disable unnecessary features

   1. Tools > Features

   2. Uncheck everything that's not needed

      For example, for minimal non-DBA development tasks, the following features are sufficient and everything else (including Database Migrations and Version Control) can be unchecked:

      - Oracle SQL Developer - Schema Browser
      - Oracle SQL Developer - Snippet
      - Oracle SQL Developer - SSH Support
      - Oracle SQL Developer - XML Schema
      

   3. Apply Changes

@Grelo4ka @Nishant0073 @lobtx @AgustinArroyos @Cavalari0100

I'm still using these steps to this day to install SQL Developer on the latest Ubuntu LTS (22.04). So it seems this bug must be specific to Debian.

I did some searching, and it sounds like Debian has something called dh_userlocal (dh = "Debian helper?") that kicks in when packages try to install files under /usr/local:

• dh_usrlocal: ... is not a directory
• Why is dh_usrlocal throwing a build error?

As best as I can tell, this causes issues with alien as per this bug: Bug#992188: alien: Fails to create packages that place files in /usr/local

If that's the case, then it appears to have been fixed in alien v8.95.5, based on the changelog: https://debian.pkgs.org/sid/debian-main-amd64/alien_8.95.6_all.deb.html

So for anyone else running into this issue on Debian, you may want to upgrade alien first. I'll add a note to the steps in case this fixes it.

For today, the debian bullseye version is 8.95.4 and fails.
I believe that the version 8.96.6 is only available in sid repository.

What I done was:

apt remove --purge alien
wget --quiet -O /tmp/alien.deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/a/alien/alien_8.95.6_all.deb
dpkg -i /tmp/alien.deb

Then, use alien to convert to deb package

Thanks for discussion. While the solution proposed by @lobtx works fine, @sgtcortez is right and updating alien package to version 8.95.6 allows to convert the .rpm package do .deb without encountering the dh_usrlocal: error bug. Happy database modeling