A while ago when Libreoffice 3.5.0 was released, I found out to my chagrin that I was unable to successfully compile it on Slackware 13.37.
There was no change when 3.5.1 came out, but thankfully we now have a new maintenance release, LibreOffice 3.5.2. Lo and behold, I could successfully compile packages, but the SlackBuild needed several updates because the build process changes quite dramatically between the various 3.x releases. The developer team is slowly getting rid of the old StarOffice heritage, and ultimately the dependency on Java for the compilation should be completely removed. We’re note yet there however.
What I did manage is to get rid of the requirement to install an xulrunner package in order to create the LibreOffice packages. I updated my virtual machine running Slackware 13.37 with all the patches which were released by Pat. This includes a spiced-up version of Seamonkey which originally got the updates in order to be able to compile OpenJDK, but it is also able to aid in the compilation of LibreOffice. All you need to add now are packages for Apache Ant and the Archive:Zip Perl module.
You can find the packages for Slackware 13.37 (and -current) in the usual locations (all of the mirrors below also offer rsync access):
- http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ (master site)
- http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/
- http://slackware.org.uk/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/
- http://scw.net.br/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/
- http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-libreoffice/
- http://alien.slackbook.org/slackbuilds/libreoffice/
One word of caution!
LibreOffice changed the location of its configuration directory (again). Originally using ~/.ooo it switched to ~/.libreoffice which will probably be where you will find your custom settings stored. The 3.5 releases however, use ~/.config/libreoffice . The best thing to do is move your current configuration directory to the new location, so that LibreOffice keeps working as expected:
$ mv ~/.libreoffice ~/.config/libreoffice
If you had already started the new LibreOffice program, then you will have to delete the fresh and almost empty ~/.config/libreoffice directory first of course.
Cheers, Eric
This is a good news.
Thanks a lot for your work and your time!
Thank you Eric for this new package and the word of caution that avoided me some trouble during my upgrade from 3.4 version
Merci beaucoup !
Thanks a lot!
Heel erg bedankt!
Great! Thanks a lot for this, it is extremely useful!
great job!!
excuse me, but Apache Ant and Archive::Zip are needed only to compile LibreOffice, not when just using your packages, right?
Wow, you finally complete this build. I will check the updated SlackBuild to see what has been changed in order to get it completed
Thanks Eric!
thanks a lot
Hi LoneStar,
Indeed the apache-ant and perl-archive-zip packages are only required during the compilation of the package, they are not needed for actually using LibreOffice.
Eric
Hey Eric
Great work
Compiled 3.5.2.2 overnight and using it this morning.
All seems to be fine business
A point of interest possibly, I compiled it with your openJDK installed.
Thanks
‘wannabe compiler’
john
AlleyTrotter
Thanks a lot, Eric.
It works much faster than the rpm rebased version from SBo. Also looks much better in KDE (the interface) and looks like fonts are rendered better.
Thanks for that feedback dolphin77!
I have not seen actual comparisons of the official RPM’s versus my native Slackware compilation. I am glad itr works out so well. Makes it worth the effort 🙂
Eric
I’m glad the Slackbuild is working for others, but I can’t seem to compile it here. It has failed every time at:
Failed to install: at /tmp/build/tmp-libreoffice/build/solenv/bin/ooinstall line 120.
make[1]: *** [install] Error 255
make[1]: Leaving directory /tmp/build/tmp-libreoffice/build’
make: *** [source-env-and-recurse] Error 2
mv: cannot stat /tmp/build/package-libreoffice/usr/lib64/libreoffice/sdk/classes’: No such file or directory
./libreoffice.SlackBuild FAILED at line 927
Do I need Sun’s jdk? or are you using your openjdk? (I have openjdk installed)
Brad,
The actual error will be _much_ earlier than what you just posted.
I built using a “vanilla” Slackware 13.37 with the jre package replaced by extra/jdk, and only applied all official Slackware 13.37 patches. Nothing more, nothing less. Well, apart from Ant and that single Perl module.
Eric
I’m on -current (with your multilib additions) but somehow missed the 5 April update to qtscriptgenerator. For some reason the compile worked after updating that package.
[OOT] how about calligra? stable version (2.4) has been released this week.
I’m not seeing any Formula module. $ soffice –math returns nothing and all the formula menu entries are grayed out. Something missing in the build?
Hi Brad
Pat updated qtscriptgenerator because I asked him to. I am trying to compile Libreoffice on ARM -current platform and have several issues there. One was qtscriptgenerator, another is boost (for which there will be an update in the next -current batch) and probably more issues will come up.
Eric
@Widya
Calligra 2.4 will be available as a package soon.
Eric
@ngc891
No idea what happened. I see that the Math module does indeed not work / not exist.
I hope I will find time to look at this, but don’t hold your breath.
Eric
Thank you, Eric. Nice work!
I had been having issues trying to get the latest POVRay beta to compile after the gcc 4.7 upgrade. I ended up having to update boost to 1.49. The patches at https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/6165 were not working for me with the boost-1.45 in current.
Once again thanks a lot for your work Eric !
I have installed LibreOffice 3.5.2 on my Slack 13.37 stable 64 bits using your package and everything works fine until yesterday !
I put a large number ( > 70 000 ) floats like 232.7 or 214.6 in the B column of Calc and I wanted to see the minimum of all these values.
So I put a formula in another cell saying “MIN(B1;B72345)”
and I got “0” : amazing !
So I modified the formula and tried “MIN(B1;B5)” and got again “0” which was obviouly false !
I tried different values , tried to rewrite the formula without success: I eternally got “0” !
Does someone see also this strange behaviour or is it a problem with my computer ?
Hello everybody, thanks Eric for your work.
FYI, is the message I just posted to users@global.libreoffice.org:
>—cut here—Styles and formatting” in the menu, LO crashes.
When I launch LO again, after recovery of the files that were open the “Styles and formatting dialog” is displayed.
Any clue ? I didn’t find this bug in this lists’s archive and do not know how to access the bug tracking system.
>—cut here–<
Did any Slackware user encounter the same bug?
I’ve just found that this bug has been reported already, see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45288.
Sorry for the noise, Eric you may erase this post and the previous one.
when we execute lomath, it will launch lowriter… so strange
Hi Willy
I have found the cause and my soon-to-be-released Libre Office 3.5.3 packages will have a working LO Math.
Eric
Great news. Thanks Eric 🙂