My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

LibreOffice 3.5.0 is out… no Slack packages yet

Last week, the Document Foundation released version 3.5.0 of their LibreOffice suite.

Read all about it in their official announcement “the best free office suite ever“. LibreOffice has made great strides ever since it was forked off OpenOffice. On LinuxQuestions.org, which hosts my favourite Slackware forum, LibreOffice was chosen by its member community as Office Suite of the Year (with 81.01% of the votes). Bravo!

Of course, I wanted to have Slackware packages ready ASAP. Silly me… the developers are changing the build process with each new release cycle. The 3.3 -> 3.4 switch gave me headaches and 3.4 -> 3.5 is no different. In fact, it is even worse. The build system is moving toward using standard autoconf/automake/make tooling, and piece-by-piece getting rid of java/dmake for its compilation. This means, I had to revise my libreoffice.SlackBuild script again.

Unfortunately I did not have the chance (due to time constraints) to test beta builds, so now that the release is there, I am faced with an inability to compile new packages…

I have been running compilations for days, breaking off after 12+ hours repeatedly, and currently I can’t even get past the “configure” stage… being stuck at a horribly broken SlackBuild script.

No doubt I will eventually succeed, and present you some nice packages, but not soon. Terribly sorry, but I thought I would at least let you know.

In the meantime, I did manage to build VLC packages (which you can read all about in my previous post) and soon some new QEMU and qemu-kvm packages. A lot of my time is currently spent on a new ARM port of Slackware. I hope to write some more about that too, in the near future.

Cheers, Eric

11 Comments

  1. Nille

    It will be here when it’s ready.
    No rush as new major = new bugs
    3.4.5 is an good release.

  2. jaycee

    That’s no trouble at all Eric. LibreOffice 3.4 is still expected to have one last minor release in late March, so its not as if it’s not being maintained. Also, as Nillie alluded to, it’s very likely there are undiscovered and unpleasant bugs, which prevent this first release of LO 3.5 from deserving the title of Slackware-stable (after all, it still has yet to earn The Document Foundation tick of approval). LO 3.5.1 is expected in early March, and LO 3.5.2 in early April, so it’s perfectly reasonable for you to take your time testing your scripts with the current release in between your other pursuits, and wait until one of those later releases before releasing your work to your adoring fans. 🙂

  3. Antid Oto

    Hi all. You can try my SLKBUILD script (for libreoffice 3.4 and 3.5) from SalixOS forum. Try and tell me:
    http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3044

  4. alienbob

    No offense Antid Oto, but your “SLKBUILD” scripts only re-package the binaries compiled by other people.

    If you want such a thing, it would be just as well to use Niels Horn’s SlackBuild script at http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.37/office/libreoffice/

    If you can show me a working SlackBuild script which compiles LibreOffice from source, then we’re talking.

    Eric

  5. Antid Oto

    Of course it’s only a repackage. I mention it only as an alternative solution for LibreOffice 3.5 on slackware. Far be it in me to offend you. Does not seem right to despise this work “only” because you as you build from source. It is not necessary that unfortunate comment. I respect all those who offer software solutions for Linux regardless of the medium. The important thing is the free software and freedom.

  6. Altor

    Hi Eric, it’s not a big deal. Take your time and thank you for your job.

  7. Didier Spaier

    Hi Eric,
    Good to know that you are working in it.

    I have been keeping an eye on http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/ChangeLog.txt in the hope that your new SlackBuild will show.

    Eager to try the new version I am running Niels Horn’s package for the time being … But will use yours as soon as it is available.

    Thanks for all you do for us, including the new VLC package ; BTW now the “search” function works in the playlist 😉

    Didier

  8. Ay

    Thanks for your work ! I’ll have patience ^^

  9. Eduardo

    Thank you again, Eric. I’ll wait ti?l it’s ready 🙂

  10. Ahmad

    I’d be very interested to hear how the ARM port is coming along, having just taken delivery of a shiny new BeagleBone board at work.

    We’re planning to use a number of these to develop a distributed website monitoring platform; I’d love to be able to have an ARMv7-optimized Slackware on them 😀

    Was planning to use ARMedSlack with the kernel and other key packages recompiled for hardfloat support, but a full port would be.. well… amazing!

  11. alienbob

    I am well under way:

    ls -R ~/work/ARM/slackarm-current/slackware/*/*armv7hl*.t?z | wc -l
    692

    However I am at the point where I need to test my kernel and initrd and see if I can boot the TrimSLice using my own slackarm-current. So far I have been compiling in a chroot running on the original Ubuntu which came with the device.
    I ran into the issue that I need more than 1 GB of RAM in order to compile the new gcc-4.6.2 but the TrimSlice has only one 1GB of physical RAM and the Ubuntu kernel has swap disabled… so I need a better OS to continue my compilation.

    What’s left: a lot of the packages in “L” that are basically KDE dependencies; KDE itself; seamonkey/firefox/thunderbird which refuse to compile with gcc-4.5.3; and I am basically waiting to start with the combo gcc-4.6.2 / glibc-2.14.1.

    I have written a kernel.SlackBuild but have not tested if the resulting 3.2.6 kernel actually boots…

    Eric

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