Build FAQ for OpenOffice.org
Date: 09 April 2003 FAQ| These faq have been compiled over the span of OpenOffice's lifetime. Most of the information is now out of date. See the OpenOffice FAQ page on our official wiki for up-to-date information. If you find instances that need updating, let us know by sending a note to dev@openoffice.apache.org. |
Table of contents
- What source code will be available at www.OpenOffice.org?
- What platforms has OpenOffice been built on?
- How does OpenOffice.org build?
- How much hard drive space needed for a full build of OpenOffice including source?
- How long does an OpenOffice.org build take?
- How do developers work with StarOffice?
- How many projects are there?
- How much source code is there?
- What is missing from the release(and why)?
- Can someone explain what these child workspace are ?
- Where do I go to get help?
- What else should I be aware of?
- Any known build problems?
FAQ
What source code will be available at
www.OpenOffice.org?
 |
The source code for OpenOffice.org will be nearly all the
source code in development
for StarOffice. The source code not available for OpenOffice.org is
source
code or binaries which have been licensed to Sun Microsystems from
external
parties which Sun Microsystems is not entitled to distribute. Any
code which cannot be distributed has been identified and removed. In
order
that OpenOffice.org builds, instructions will be available to source
external
code or the code will be stubbed. OpenOffice.org could benefit from
work in
this area.
Developers working on StarOffice will continue to commit changes to the same CVS tree as accessible at www.OpenOffice.org. |
What platforms has OpenOffice been built on?
|
OpenOffice.org has been built on Linux (RedHat 8) , Solaris
(Sparc 2.6-2.9) and
WindowsNT.
A port for the Mac OS X is currently in development and on going work is available in the CVS tree. For OS/2, HP/UX and other platforms previously supported, the source is available but has not been built. |
How does OpenOffice.org build?
|
Sun Microsystems has made changes to the build environment to
make it possible
to build OpenOffice.org outside the highly customized and optimized
environment
that is used by the development team. Where possible, OpenOffice.org
uses open
source build tools but there may be scope to use more. Source code is
available
for all build tools.
Although work has been done to make the build experience as
close as
possible to the open source norm, the complexity and size of the
application
means that the build experience is different to the open source norm.
For more details please see http://tools.openoffice.org#Build |
How much hard drive space needed for a full build
of OpenOffice including
source?
|
The current recommendation is 3GB.
The source code is ~400MB The build requires about 3GB in total including source. The creation of an installation set requires ~300MB. Adding symbols to the build will add a further 5 gig approximately to the build size. Developers typically only build specific directories with full debugging for this reason using `build debug=true` |
How long does an OpenOffice.org build take?
|
Our current experience is that a full build of OpenOffice.org
is approximately
20 hours on a single CPU Pentium III with 256MB of RAM running Linux.
Using CC="ccache gcc" CXX="ccache g++" has a complete build cycle about 4 hours on a 1.8Ghz Pentium. |
How do developers work with StarOffice?
|
Release Engineering in Sun do a full build of StarOffice once
a week, in
an optimised environment. On successful completion of the full build,
the
latest solver is made available to all developers. Developers build
their
CVS module(s) against the current solver. After code changes,
developers
build the CVS module(s) and "deliver" the shared headers, shared
libraries
and binaries to their copy of the current solver for testing.
Incompatible changes are allowed between full builds. So that incompatible work is not mixed, the name of each shared library/DLL includes the build number, which is incremented by one each week. In order to assist the OpenOffice.org community, Sun plan to provide a similar environment because the code base is so large and current developers use this. Sun intend to provide one tarball of solver for each of a number of platforms on a regular basis on www.OpenOffice.org. These will be known as milestones. Therefore the proposed process for development will be :
OpenOffice.org has a large code base. CVS is used as a synchronisation mechanism between development teams. API changes in low level CVS modules are checked in to give higher level modules a chance to reflect these. Between (incompatible) milestone builds it's a common circumstance that API changes have started in low level modules and not all modules using these APIs have been changed already. Therefore, the build using the head revision build may not always be successful. A new methodology is being introduced now. Head may be a buildable master workspace shortly. |
|
Approximately 20 projects will be created for OpenOffice.org. These projects are an attempt to facilitate community communication. Examples of projects include XML Office, Porting, Localization, Applications, and Build Tools. |
How much source code is there?
|
OpenOffice.org source will have approx. 30,000 source files.
OpenOffice.org will have approx. 9,000,000 lines of code. The majority of the code is C++. |
What is missing from the release(and why)?
|
The source of some external StarOffice components, licensed
to StarOffice,
will not available with the OpenOffice.org source code. These
components include:
* L&H International CorrectSpell, Intl. Electronic Thesaurus - spell checking, international dictionaries & thesaurus * Inso Word for Word - document filters for document formats other than MS Office * Adabas D - database engine Instructions will be available to download external source code which cannot be distributed on www.OpenOffice.org The GPC code is a special case and must be obtained separately by the OOo developer. See the build guides. |
Can someone explain what are these child workspaces
are?
|
The main points are:
|
|
Firstly you might want to look through the dev@openoffice.apache.org
mailing
archives for similar problems.
Secondly you might want to post a message there outlining your problem. If you have a more specific question then you will be directed to another mailing list specific to your question, like dev@sw.openoffice.org for word processing questions For a quick question or a chat then you might like to talk on IRC to other developers. IRC is not only for developers however quite a few are there a lot and can help out with quick questions and good advice.
|
What else should I be aware of?
|
Most comments are in German and some are in English. In the
future all new comments will be in English.
There will be a number prerequisites required to download and
build OpenOffice.org. Please see http://tools.openoffice.org#Build
for a full list.
|
|
We have a few build problems
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