Faking a Debian/Ubuntu-Package-Dependency

Problem: A Debian/Ubuntupackage has wrong dependencys

Concrete: Install google-earth on Ubuntu 13.10 leads to the message: ia32-libs dependency failed. The research leeds to: the ia32-libs are replaced with ...
But the suggested solutions to force install of an old package are not please me.

Unpacking and edit the dependencies

mkdir g
cd g
ar vx ../google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb
tar -zxf control.tar.gz
vi control

Now we can edit the file:

Package: google-earth-stable
Version: 7.1.1.1888-r0
Architecture: amd64
Maintainer: Google Earth Team 
Installed-Size: 198273
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.14.0)
Depends: lsb-core (>= 3.2), lib32z1, lib32ncurses5, lib32bz2-1.0
Section: net
Priority: optional
Description: Explore, search and discover the planet
 Google Earth lets you fly anywhere to see satellite imagery, 3D buildings, 3D trees, terrain, Street View, planets and much more.

The Depends was changed !

Then we have to repack the package:

tar -zcvf control.tar.gz control postinst postrm prerm
ar cru google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb debian-binary control.tar.gz data.tar.lzma

Now we can install the new package.

In my case, dpkg -i google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb grubles a litte bit, and suggests to call apt-get -f install

This procedure was successfull.

We risk, that google-earth uses libraries or miss libraries. In GNU/linux-Systems, the shared libraries ar versioned. In the worst case we risk that the executables crashes when we execute them. We have to delete the package then.