GNU Linux Sparc Porting

GNU Linux Sparc Porting

The objective is to maintain the complete upstream sources so that the GNU/Linux sparc platform can be packaged for example by debian, gentoo and others. Also to provide an upstream "benchmark" released version that can be used for confirming who owns any bugs.

For GNU/Linux sparc all building now is done with gcj. As gcj is developing rapidly it is preferred to use the latest version. The latest gcj version that can be used comes with gcc4.0.x pre-release which is updated approximately weekly.

It should be better to use gcc4.1 but see below.

Other projects that need more work:

- fix multimedia (sound is working but needs Java Media Framework with gij)

- qa with testtool

- very slow startup (depends on javaldx?)

The latest upstream release is on mirrors under pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/linuxsparc

Building with GCC 4.1

There are 2 main issues listed below, and a few others yet...

i57855 Bad uses of getCppuType

Some patches for this isssue are in cws, for details see the dev@porting mail thread 
dev@porting

i58141 extra qualification on member

This affects many unrelated projects.

Building with gcj

Some problems with blackdown java for sparc have forced the sparc port into building with gcj which works fine. The patches for using Ant are based on those used by the debian packagers (thanks to _rene_) but are slightly different because I do not use some debian tools. Recent patches for building GNU Linux Sparc are at i50599 but these will not be committed as they need more work to be included in the config_office project.

i50599 Build GNU Linux Sparc with gcj

Installing from rpm without root access

The GNU Linux Sparc packages from contrib/linuxsparc should not interfere with installations provided by the various distribution packagers such as debian, gentoo etc. Therefore the supplied rpms can be installed in the user's home directory using the install_linux.sh script which is available on mirrors at pub/OpenOffice.org/developer/install_scripts/

The rpm command is required but root access is not required