| Cross-compiling LibreOffice |
| =========================== |
| |
| Notes on cross-compiling LibreOffice, originally written by Tor |
| Lillqvist <tlillqvist@novell.com> <tml@iki.fi> in May, 2011, for later |
| history see git log. |
| |
| My cross-compilation experimentation is going on for four platforms: |
| Windows, iOS, Android and PowerPC Mac OS X. I work on the master |
| branch of LibreOffice. Some other people have talked about setting up |
| a separate branch for Android work, or even separate clones at |
| github. I am not interested in that. |
| |
| 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 and done mostly in my own 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, some more details might be needed. 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). But as |
| far as I know, 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 I have not attempted to try to keep it working; |
| in fact I 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. |
| |
| In my opinion, 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. Personally I use 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/<your_os>/windows:mingw:win32.repo |
| |
| where <your_os> 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. What I have noticed of it seems a bit randomish, with |
| copy-pasting having been preferred to factoring out differences. |
| |
| Most of the configuration settings are maintained in the LibreOfficeMinGW |
| distro-config, 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 LibreOfficeMinGW distro 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 <your-build-dir>/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' <your_clone_dir> |
| |
| 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 I think |
| |
| - 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) to design a |
| touch GUI for LibreOffice, so the work on cross-compiling LibreOffice |
| for iOS is extremely experimental, and of course partly pointless;) |
| But it is interesting and fun nonetheless. |
| |
| Obviously it will make sense to build only a part of LibreOffice's |
| code for iOS. Most likely all GUI-oriented code should be left out, |
| and some iOS app 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. As I said, this is |
| highly experimental and just in its baby steps phase. |
| |
| 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, so that is where I have been doing it. |
| |
| Here is my 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 <bits/c++config.h> |
| |
| Android |
| ------- |
| |
| I don't know much about Android, but from a technical point of view it |
| is a kind of Linux, of course. As far as I know it is allowed for an |
| Android app to use shared objects, but if it isn't, then just the same |
| approach as used on iOS will need to be used. |
| |
| As for the GUI, the same holds as said above for iOS. |
| |
| I have done my Android cross-compilation work 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 my autogen.lastrun for Android: |
| SYSBASE=/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/platforms/android-9/arch-arm |
| CC=ccache /home/tml/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-gcc -march=armv7-a -mfloat-abi=softfp -mthumb -mfpu=neon -Wl,--fix-cortex-a8 --sysroot /home/tml/android-ndk-r7/platforms/android-9/arch-arm -L/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/libs/armeabi-v7a |
| CXX=ccache /home/tml/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-g++ -march=armv7-a -mfloat-abi=softfp -mthumb -mfpu=neon -Wl,--fix-cortex-a8 --sysroot /home/tml/android-ndk-r7/platforms/android-9/arch-arm -I /home/tml/android-ndk-r7/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/include -I/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/libs/armeabi-v7a/include -L/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/libs/armeabi-v7a -fexceptions -frtti |
| AR=/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-ar |
| NM=/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-nm |
| OBJDUMP=/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-objdump |
| RANLIB=/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-ranlib |
| STRIP=/home/tml/android-ndk-r7/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-strip |
| CC_FOR_BUILD=ccache gcc |
| CXX_FOR_BUILD=ccache g++ |
| --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 |
| |
| |
| 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. I have just started experimenting with it. My |
| 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 |
| |
| |
| |
| That's all, thank you, and have a nice day. People with commit access, |
| feel free to edit this document, and add yourself below. Sorry for |
| writing now initially from such a personal point of view. |
| |
| --Tor Lillqvist <tlillqvist@novell.com>, <tml@iki.fi> |