path: root/README.cross

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/<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. 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 <your-build-dir>/instsetoo_native/wntgcci.pro/LibreOffice_Dev/archive/install/en-US/LibO-Dev_3.6.0alpha0_Win_x86_install-arc_en-US.tar.gz
$ cd LibO-Dev_3.6.0alpha0_Win_x86_install-arc_en-US/LOdev\ 3.6/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_3.6.0alpha0_Win_x86_install-arc_en-US\LOdev 3.6\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_3.6.0alpha0_Win_x86_install-arc_en-US/LOdev 3.6' <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

- 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 <bits/c++config.h>

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