Cross-compiling LibreOffice =========================== The cross-compilation experimentation is going on for four platforms: Windows, iOS, Android and PowerPC Mac OS X. It happens in the master branch of LibreOffice. Some people have talked about setting up a separate branch for Android work, or even separate clones at github, but that is not necessary. Cross-compilation of LibreOffice completely is not possible yet. Much work has been done, "baby steps" for some platforms, much more for others, but a lot remains. For iOS and Android this work is highly experimental, originally done in spare time just for the hacking pleasure. No promise, explicit or implied, is given that it will ever be finished. Searching for information about cross-compilation of OpenOffice.org (the predecessor of LibreOffice) you will find information about what actually was not cross-compilation, but using QEMU. General ------- In GNU Autoconf terminology, "build" is the platform on which you are running a build on some software and "host" is the platform on which the software you are building will run. Only in the specific case of building compilers and other programming tools is the term "target" used to indicate the platform for which the tools your are building will produce code. As LibreOffice is not a compiler, the "target" term should not be used in the context of cross-compilation. (For a case where all three of "build", "host" and "target" are different: consider a gcc cross-compiler running on Windows, producing code for Android, where the cross-compiler itself was built on Linux. (This is a real case.) An interesting tidbit is that such configurations are called "Canadian Cross".) Even though the LibreOffice build mechanism is highly unorthodox, the configure script takes the normal --build and --host options like any GNU Autoconf -based configure script. To cross-compile, you basically need just to specify a suitable --host option and things should work out nicely. In practise, many details needed to be handled. See examples below. What is so hard, then? ---------------------- Despite the fact that the configure script takes normal --build and --host options, that is just the beginning. In practise a lot of work was necessary to separate tests for "host" and "build" platforms in the configure script. See the git log for details. And the reasonably "standard" configure.in is just the top level; when we get down to the actual makefilery used to build the bits of LibreOffice, it gets much worse. Windows ------- There is some support in LibreOffice already (from OpenOffice.org) for building it locally on Windows with the GNU tool-chain (MinGW). Apparently, that work has never attempted cross-compilation. This OOo-originated MinGW support attempts to support both running Cygwin gcc in its -mno-cygwin mode, and a native MinGW compiler. The -mno-cygwin mechanism in the Cygwin gcc is rapidly being obsoleted, if it isn't already, and we have not attempted to try to keep it working; in fact we have activly cleaned out mechanisms related to this. Ditto for native MinGW. If one compiles natively on Windows, just use Microsoft's compiler. OOo/LO has been built for Windows all the time using that. The only case where it makes sense to use MinGW is for cross-compilation. There is just too much crack on Windows anyway, and it is a semi-miracle (well, make that the result of years of work) that the MSVC build under Cygwin works as nicely as it does. MinGW is available as cross-build toolchains pre-packaged in more or less official packages for many Linux distros including Debian, Fedora, openSUSE and SLE. For instance the mingw32 packages in the Open Build Service, running on openSUSE: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/windows:/mingw:/win32/ For example, you can install it like this: zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/windows:/mingw:/win32//windows:mingw:win32.repo where is one of SLE_11, SLE_11_SP1, openSUSE_11.3, openSUSE_11.4 or openSUSE_Factory. zypper in mingw32-cross-gcc mingw32-cross-gcc-c++ mingw32-python-devel \ mingw32-libexpat-devel mingw32-libexpat mingw32-boost-devel \ mingw32-libhyphen-devel mingw32-libhyphen mingw32-hyphen-en \ mingw32-liblpsolve mingw32-liblpsolve-devel \ mingw32-libxml2-devel mingw32-libxslt-devel mingw32-libicu \ mingw32-libicu-devel mingw32-libgraphite2 mingw32-libgraphite2-devel \ mingw32-libcairo2 mingw32-cairo-devel mingw32-librsvg mingw32-librsvg-devel \ mingw32-hunspell mingw32-hunspell-devel mingw32-libcurl \ mingw32-libcurl-devel mingw32-libneon mingw32-libneon-devel \ mingw32-libopenssl mingw32-libopenssl-devel mingw32-libexttextcat \ mingw32-libexttextcat-devel mingw32-libdb mingw32-libdb-devel \ mingw32-cross-pkg-config mingw32-pkg-config mingw32-libcppunit \ mingw32-libcppunit-devel mingw32-libredland mingw32-libredland-devel \ mingw32-libmythes mingw32-libmythes-devel There might be more that are missing, please read carefully what autogen.sh tells you, and either remove one of the --with-system-*, or install the missing dependency. It also looks like graphite2.pc needs tweaking in order to work right; but that's likely to be fixed in the openSUSE project. It is somewhat unclear how well thought-out the conditionals and code for MinGW inside the OOo-originated code in LibreOffice actually are. It often seems a bit randomish, with copy-pasting having been preferred to factoring out differences. Most of the configuration settings are maintained in the distro-configs/LibreOfficeMinGW.conf file, so in your autogen.lastrun, you can use: CC=ccache i686-w64-mingw32-gcc CXX=ccache i686-w64-mingw32-g++ CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache gcc CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache g++ --with-distro=LibreOfficeMinGW Alternatively, you can use something like the following; but the preferred way is to keep the LibreOfficeMinGW.conf file up-to-date. CC=ccache i686-w64-mingw32-gcc CXX=ccache i686-w64-mingw32-g++ CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache gcc CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache g++ --build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --host=i686-w64-mingw32 --with-distro=LibreOfficeWin32 --disable-activex --disable-binfilter --disable-build-mozilla --disable-directx --disable-ext-nlpsolver --disable-ext-pdfimport --disable-ext-presenter-console --disable-ext-presenter-minimizer --disable-ext-report-builder --disable-ext-scripting-beanshell --disable-ext-scripting-javascript --disable-ext-wiki-publisher --disable-ext-wiki-publisher --disable-mozilla --disable-nss-module --disable-zenity --enable-python=system --with-external-tar=/mnt/hemulen/ooo/git/master/src --with-num-cpus=1 --with-max-jobs=1 --with-system-altlinuxhyph --with-system-boost --with-system-cairo --with-system-cppunit --with-system-curl --with-system-db --with-system-expat --with-system-gettext --with-system-hunspell --with-system-icu --with-system-libpng --with-system-libwpd --with-system-libwpg --with-system-libwps --with-system-libxml --with-system-lpsolve --with-system-mythes --with-system-neon --with-system-openssl --with-system-redland --with-vendor=no --without-help --without-helppack-integration --without-myspell-dicts Once you have compiled it, you may want to try to run it: $ cd /tmp $ tar xf /instsetoo_native/wntgcci.pro/LibreOffice_Dev/archive/install/en-US/LibO-Dev_OOO350m1_Win_x86_install-arc_en-US.tar.gz $ cd LibO-Dev_OOO350m1_Win_x86_install-arc_en-US/LibO-dev\ 3.5/program $ wine soffice.exe NB. it is important to unpack somewhere low in the hierarchy structure (like in /tmp as advised above), otherwise you'll get BerkeleyDB errors on startup. And if you are brave enough, you can even debug it. First you have to add the URE dll's to the wine's PATH using 'wine regedit' - see http://www.winehq.org/docs/wineusr-guide/environment-variables, and add Z:\tmp\LibO-Dev_OOO350m1_Win_x86_install-arc_en-US\LibO-dev 3.5\URE\bin to "Path" in My Computer->HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Environment. Then run linkoo, so that when you rebuild something, you can directly see the changes the next time you run it: solenv/bin/linkoo '/tmp/LibO-Dev_OOO350m1_Win_x86_install-arc_en-US/LibO-dev 3.5' And start debugging: $ winedbg soffice.bin Would be great to be able to use winedbg --gdb, but it was crashing here :-( - but maybe you'll be more lucky. TODO: - installation - so far the make_installer.pl calls makecab.exe, uuidgen.exe, and others; would be best to avoid that if at all possible (using a free cab implementation, part of Wine or something) - MSI generation - if at all possible, the make dev-install installation (with links back to the build) should be done so that it would be directly executable via wine after doing make dev-install :-) - runtime - no idea if the entire thing works after the installation at all; I suppose there will be runtime problems to look at too - cleanup - enable & fix pieces that are currently disabled - --without-myspell-dicts - --disable-directx - --disable-activex - --disable-mozilla - much of the stuff currently relies on --with-system-*, and consequently on the mingw32-* openSUSE packages; might be good to be able to build with as few dependencies as possible - but that is low prio - profiling - when all the above is sorted out, we should look at the speed of this vs. the speed of the MSVC version iOS --- iOS is the operating system of Apple's mobile devices. Clearly for a device like the iPad it would be totally unacceptable to run a normal LibreOffice application with a overlapping windows and mouse-oriented GUI widgets. No work has been done (at least publicly) by others to design a touch GUI for LibreOffice, so that is something that needs to be done. Obviously it will make sense to use only a part of LibreOffice's code for iOS. Most likely lots of the GUI-oriented code should be left out, and some iOS app(s) that eventually wants to use the remaining bits will handle all its GUI in a platform-dependent manner. How well it will be possible to do such a split remains to be seen. Technically, one important special aspect of iOS is that apps are not allowed to load own dynamic libraries. (System libraries are used in the form of dynamic libraries, just like on Mac OS X, of which iOS is a variant.) So all the libraries in LibreOffice that normally are shared libraries (DLLs on Windows, shared objects (.so) on Linux, dynamic libraries on Mac OS X (.dylib)) need to be built as static archives instead. Obviously this will have some interesting consequences for how UNO is implemented and used. None of that has been spared much thought yet. The Apple tool-chain for iOS cross-building is available only for Mac OS X. Here is an autogen.lastrun for iOS (device): CXX=ccache /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/g++ -arch armv7 -isysroot /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS5.0.sdk CC=ccache /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/gcc -arch armv7 -isysroot /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS5.0.sdk CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -mmacosx-version-min=10.4 CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/g++-4.0 -mmacosx-version-min=10.4 --with-distro=LibreOfficeiOS --with-external-tar=/Volumes/ooo/git/master/src --with-num-cpus=1 --with-max-jobs=1 --without-help --without-helppack-integration --without-myspell-dicts And here for the iOS simulator: CXX=ccache /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/g++ -arch i386 -isysroot /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator5.0.sdk CC=ccache /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/gcc -arch i386 -isysroot /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator5.0.sdk CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -mmacosx-version-min=10.4 CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/g++-4.0 -mmacosx-version-min=10.4 --with-distro=LibreOfficeiOS --with-external-tar=/Volumes/ooo/git/master/src --with-num-cpus=1 --with-max-jobs=1 --enable-debug --without-help --without-helppack-integration --without-myspell-dicts It seems that with the latest iOS SDK one has to do: sudo ln -s i686-apple-darwin10 /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulator4.3.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1/i686-apple-darwin11 or g++ won't find its headers like Android ------- From a technical point of view the core Android OS is Linux, but everything else is different. Unlike iOS, an Android app can use shared objects just fine, so that aspect of UNO doesn't need special handling. As for the GUI, the same holds as said above for iOS. Android cross-compilation work has been done on Linux (openSUSE in particular) and Mac OS X. The Android cross-buld tool-chain (the "Native Development Kit", or NDK) is available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. (Trying to cross-compile from Windows will probably drive you insane.) Here is an autogen.lastrun for Android, when cross-compiling from Mac OS X: CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -mmacosx-version-min=10.4 CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/g++-4.0 -mmacosx-version-min=10.4 --with-android-ndk=/Users/tml/android-ndk-r7 --with-android-sdk=/Users/tml/android-sdk-macosx --build=x86_64-apple-darwin11 --disable-zenity --enable-werror --with-distro=LibreOfficeAndroid --with-external-tar=/Volumes/ooo/git/master/src --disable-python --without-helppack-integration --without-myspell-dicts --with-java And here is an autogen.lastrun for Android when cross-compiling from Linux: CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache gcc CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache g++ --with-android-ndk=/home/tml/android-ndk-r7 --build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --disable-zenity --with-distro=LibreOfficeAndroid --with-external-tar=/mnt/hemulen/ooo/git/master/src --disable-python --with-num-cpus=1 --with-max-jobs=1 --without-helppack-integration --without-myspell-dicts There is no interactive end-user "app" you could run yet that would use LibreOffice code, but you can build some non-interactive unit tests and run them on the emulator (or, presumably, on a device, although that hasn't been tested as nobody with an actual Android device has worked on it yet...) The simple unit tests will succeed, the complex one still fails. These unit tests *are* proper "apps" from Android'd point of view, but they don't have any GUI and thus don't take part in the normal Android message passing and Android thinks they are stuck and offers to kill them... The activity used for these apps is in android/Bootstrap. See README.Android. To build the complex unit test (for Calc functionality; invokes the "ucalc" unit test code from sc) source the environment (. Env.Host.sh) and cd to android/qa/sc and run a "make". The Makefile here is completely manually written, this stuff is so experimental it doesn't make sense yet to try to integrate with the normal gbuild mechanism. Then to run the unit test, do "make install" followed by "make run". You most likely want to have an "adb logcat" running in another window, and you probably also want to have set the stdout and stderr of app processes to be redirected to logcat ("adb shell stop; adb shell setprop log.redirect-stdio true; adb shell start"). To debug, do manually what "make run" would do, adding args "-e lo-main-delay 20" to the command line, and when the app has started, run ndk-gdb. Unfortunately the gdb in NDK r7 is broken, use the one in the NDK build with newer versions of gcc and gdb from http://code.google.com/p/mingw-and-ndk/ instead. Running strace on the unit test in progress is often useful to find out what is going wrong. Pass something like -e lo-strace '-tt -f -e trace=file,process,network -o /system/sc/strace.out' to the am start command line. PowerPC Mac OS X ---------------- Cross-compiling for PowerPC Mac OS X from Intel Mac OS X will probably be easy. The APIs available should after all be closely identical to those on Intel Mac OS X, and LibreOffice builds fine natively on PowerPC Mac already. Only a little experimenting has been done with it. An autogen.lastrun looks like this: CC=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -arch ppc CXX=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/g++-4.0 -arch ppc CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/gcc-4.0 CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache /Xcode3/usr/bin/g++-4.0 --build=i386-apple-darwin10.7.0 --host=powerpc-apple-darwin10 --disable-mozilla --disable-build-mozilla --with-external-tar=/Volumes/ooo/git/master/src