Checkgmail in LinuxMint 8

I had used checkgmail as my preferred Gmail notifier until it stopped working with a login error some time ago.
Even in LinuxMint 8, the version of checkgmail installed from the repos doesn't work.
However, a solution is available here.
What worked for me was:
i) Install subversion

sudo apt-get install subversion

ii) Download latest version of checkgmail

svn co https://checkgmail.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/checkgmail checkgmail

iii) Copy the newer version over the old one and delete the old files (may have to confirm deletion)

sudo cp checkgmail/checkgmail /usr/bin
rm -r checkgmail

Now checkgmail should work fine. At least it did for me today.
Strange though that this fix was published 16 months ago and the LinuxMint repos still contain the outdated, non-working version