Apache OpenOffice Building Guide

Preface

This guide will help you to build Apache OpenOffice from its source code. It details the prerequisites and explains how to download the source code, prepare and then run the build.

This document is loosely based on an older, now deprecated, version.

Here is the short version for the brave and impatient:

• Download the source: svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/ooo/trunk ooo
• Configure: cd main/ ; autoconf ; ./configure <some-switches> ; ./bootstrap
• Build: source <platform-dependend-name>.sh ; cd instset_native ; build --all
• Install office
• Enjoy

Getting help

You can get help by searching this wiki or by asking questions on the developers mailing list.

You can help us improve this guide by pointing out any errors (preferably after finding a solution.)

Basics

In order to build Apache OpenOffice you need a proper environment. This includes

• a command line interpreter, typically a bash shell (although sh should be enough) inside a terminal.
• C++ compiler and linker. The exact choice depends on the operating system.
• Perl interpreter and several modules.
• Many tools from the Unix world like make or sed.

The exact list of requirements will be detailed on operating specific sub pages. Note that while some of these tools come pre-installed with the Linuxes, FreeBSD, Mac, Solaris etc. on Windows you will need to install Cygwin to provide them.

Getting the source

The source code is available as SVN repository at https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/ooo.

Check it out with

  svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/ooo/trunk ooo

More details can be found here.

Organization of the source and output tree

The source code has four top level directories:

main/

contains most of the so called modules. Each module typically provides one or more libraries. The source code of the writer application for example can be found in main/sd/.

ext_libraries/

is the new home of modules that build external libraries (libraries maintained outside of Apache OpenOffice and often outside Apache).

ext_sources/

contains the tar balls (archives) of external libraries. They are included both for convenience and to make sure that specific versions remain available. Note that the source package of the Apache OpenOffice release does not contain any external tar balls.

extras/

holds the localization data.

Most tools and scripts that are used for building are located below main/solenv/:

• dmake makefiles in main/solenv/inc/
• gmake makefiles in main/solenv/gbuild/
• executables and perl files in main/solenv/bin/
• perl modules in main/bin/modules/

Libraries and other output files that are shared between modules are stored in main/solver/.

Building

Overview

Building Apache OpenOffice consists of three steps:

Configuring/bootstrapping

Detect platform, operating system, compiler, etc. and write the information into a shell script for later use. The developer can turn on or off certain features in this phase.

Building

Compile the source code, transform other input files, apply localization.

Packing

Create a set of files, the installation set, that can be installed on the respective operating system. This can be msi/cab files for windows, deb or rpm for Linux, dmg for Mac.

The configure step has to be carried out only once. Building and packing is necessary after every source code change. There are short cuts to avoid parts of these steps (when you know what you are doing.)

General Build Requirements

The general requirements for all platforms are

Requirement	Description
Java JDK	Java Implementation compatible with JDK 1.5 or JDK 1.6. OpenJDK is supported as well.
Perl	Perl 5. Also required are the perl packages Archive::Zip LWP::UserAgent They can be installed from the shell with (you may have to run it with super user/administrator rights) perl -MCPAN -e shell If it is executed for the first time then CPAN will ask for configuration. Choose autoconfiguration. Eventually the CPAN shell appeares accepts commands. Install missing modules with install <module-name> Find more details here.6
CUPS	cups headers. Provided by a cups-devel package or a libcups2-devel
PAM	PAM support. Provided by a pam-devel package or a libpam-dev
Apache Ant	Ant 1.7
Archiver	zip and unzip
gperf	gperf tool
Mozilla1	Some Mozilla libraries are needed. Choose one of the following: Get the source from here.2 Get prebuild libraries from here.3
NSS4	Mozilla build tools5 are needed for Windows. They can be obtained here.

Notes:

1. If you are a new developer, don't use the libraries. By using the --disable-mozilla switch for ./configure you waive the extra functionality.
2. Copy the package into main/moz/download. The ./configure script will detect the source being present.
3. You have to configure with --disable-build-mozilla to enable the use of the prebuild libraries. Place LINUXGCCI{inc,lib,runtime}.zip into main/moz/zipped. The files can be reused if the packages were build following the instructions of the previous point. In the latter case they can be found in main/moz/unxlngi6.pro of a successful build.
4. The nss module will be introduced in DEV300m57. nss contains a subset of libraries from Mozilla (the moz module). They are supposed to be more current then those in the moz module. To prevent building nss and instead use the libraries from the moz module one can use the configure switch --disable-nss-module. This switch will be removed soon!
5. Use the configure switch --with-mozilla-build to tell configure where the tools are installed. For example: --with-mozilla-build=c:/mozilla-build
6. Please note that CPAN is not able to deal with usernames containing spaces. To work around this fact, when CPAN asks you to specify the CPAN build and cache directory, change the default suggestion to /cpan.

Configuration and bootstrapping

This is typically done only once after the source code is checked out. Repeat this after changing your mind about options given to configure.

The call to

  autoconf

creates the main/configure script from main/configure.in and some other input files.

The set of options/switches given to configure depends on the platform and your choice of features. A typical call looks like this

   configure                                                                                   \
       --with-dmake-url=http://dmake.apache-extras.org.codespot.com/files/dmake-4.12.tar.bz2 \
       --with-epm-url=http://ftp.easysw.com/pub/epm/3.7/epm-3.7-source.tar.gz                \
       --enable-category-b                                                                     \
       --enable-bundled-dictionaries

This tells configure

• where to find the source code of external tools dmake and epm
• to enable building external libraries that have licenses that are not compatible with the Apache license
• to bundle external dictionary extensions.

Finish this step by running

   ./bootstrap

This will build dmake and epm, download missing source code tar balls of external libraries, and download missing external dictionary extensions.

Building

Start by including the environment variables prepared by configure into your current environment with

  source <shell-script-name>

where <shell-script-name> depends on your platform:

platform id	<shell-script-name>
wntmsci12	winenv.set.sh
unxlngi6	LinuxX86Env.Set.sh
unxlngx6	LinuxX86-64Env.Set.sh
unxmacxi	MacOSXX86Env.Set.sh

Look into main/set_soenv for more platforms. (search for lines $OUTPATH = "<platform>"; and the nearby line $outfile = "<shell-script-name>";. Add the suffix .sh for the bash variant.

If you want to build the whole office and the install sets then

   cd main/instset_native
   build --all

You may want to experiment with the -P options for multi process builds to reduce the build time.

   build --all -P<m> -- -P<n>

tells build to use m processes (build up to m modules in parallel) and n threads for each module.