sudo dpkg -i error: libfuzzy-dev breaks ssdeep (<< 2.6)

Question

I'm trying to install the libfuzzy-dev package on my host machine (Linux Debian 6.0.10 (2.6.32-5amd64 x86_64)).
Installing it via sudo-apt get install shows no results. So I downloaded the .deb file from online and ran the following:

sudo dpkg -i libfuzzy-dev_2.12-1_amd64.deb 
dpkg: regarding libfuzzy-dev_2.12-1_amd64.deb containing libfuzzy-dev:
libfuzzy-dev breaks ssdeep (<< 2.6)
ssdeep (version 2.5-1) is present and installed.
dpkg: error processing libfuzzy-dev_2.12-1_amd64.deb (--install):
installing libfuzzy-dev would break ssdeep, and
deconfiguration is not permitted (--auto-deconfigure might help)
Errors were encountered while processing:
libfuzzy-dev_2.12-1_amd64.deb

My honest hunch is that one of the sources in sources.list is not really working that well. This is because when I try to re-install ssdeep, it says that it is at the newest version. Any advice?

Answer 1

My guess is that your version of Debian only has quite an old version of ssdeep in its repositories and this version of ssdeep is not compatible with the current release of libfuzzy-dev. I suggest apt-get uninstall ssdeep, then install it (and libfuzzy-dev) 'manually' i.e. not via apt-get.