How to programatically check if a software utility is installed on ubuntu using Java

Question

I am working on a Java Project for my own learning, what i have made is a class which can both read and write to external process using Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);

Answer 1

In Ubuntu/Debian you can use :

dpkg -s packagname

to see if a package is installed. Then you can parse the output of the command in your app.