My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: OOo (Page 3 of 11)

LibreOffice 6.3.2 for Slackware-current – and how to deal with “Shared library .so-version bump”

The recent update in slackware-current of the icu4c and boost packages caused some 3rd-party package breakage. The new versions of icu4c and boost come with incompatible library ABI changes.

Let me first elaborate a bit on the strategies that are available to a Slackware user on how to deal with incompatible library updates in -current.

One of the reasons people are wary of installing and running Slackware-current is the fact that at any given moment, distro updates can break 3rd-party packages (i.e. packages you have installed that are not part of the Slackware distribution itself). Slackware-current is in constant flux, it is our development environment, and software versions can make sudden jumps with unexpected consequences.

Big tip: before running any update on a slackware-current system, first check the ChangeLog.txt and scan the updates since your previous upgrade for the text “Shared library .so-version bump.” which is another way of saying “incompatible ABI change”.
If this text accompanies a package update you can be pretty certain that some 3rd-party packages that depend on it will stop working. And if that particular package is boost, icu4c or poppler, expect massive breakage. The safest approach in a case like this, is: wait with upgrading your Slackware-current; check for packages that have a dependency on the package with the ABI breakage: and track the 3rd-party repositories for updates that address the ABI breakage.

There is another strategy- one which allows you to upgrade to the latest -current while avoiding broken packages. That is to keep the older libraries on your system – the libraries your 3rd-party packages are depending on. You can simply extract these older libraries from the previous version(s) of the upgraded Slackware package. Darren Austen and I worked together to create a package repository containing historical Slackware-current packages (32bit, 64bit official packages and my own multilib archive). See https://slackware.uk/cumulative/ if you are in need of older package versions.

And in the special case of incompatible icu4c, boost and poppler updates, the easiest (short-term) workaround is to install my icu4c-compat, boost-compat and poppler-compat packages. Essentially, these convenience packages wrap the libraries of several older (original Slackware) icu4c, boost and poppler packages.
Applications that depend on these older libraries will keep on running and in the meantime you can wait for the 3rd-party packager to recompile the affected packages (or recompile yourself at your leisure). I update these packages immediately after updates to their Slackware originals. The process takes almost no time, compared with recompiling all the broken stuff.
NOTE: These ‘compat’ packages do not replace Slackware’s own icu4c, boost and poppler packages! They should be installed in parallel.

Libreoffice

The most obvious package breakage in my own repository is of course LibreOffice. It is a big package and many people do not want to recompile this themselves. A good decision, because the LibreOffice package would not compile against the new icu4c 65.1 and I needed to find the cause and create a patch first.

Since I had to compile new packages anyway, I went for the latest 6.3.2 release of LibreOffice which was announced two weeks ago.

Note that the new packages for LibreOffice 6.3.2 in my repository, do contain “libreoffice-kde-integration”, containing Qt5 and KDE5 (aka Plasma5) support.
If you do not have KDE5 packages installed at all, don’t worry. LibreOffice will work great – the KDE integration package just will not add anything useful for you. On the other hand, if you have Plasma5 installed you will benefit from native file selection dialog windows and other integration features. And even if you do not have Plasma5 but you do have Qt5 installed, then you will be able to run LibreOffice with Qt5 User Interface elements instead of defaulting to GTK3.

If you want to compile Libreoffice 6.3.2 packages yourself using my SlackBuild, then be aware that by default the KDE5 support is disabled. You will have to set the value of the script parameter “ADD_KDE5” to “YES”. Additionally you will have to install the packages that this functionality depends on otherwise the compilation will fail.
Read the ‘README.kde5‘ file in the source directory for the list of packages you’ll need. All of them can be  found in my ‘ktown’ repository: https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/

Enjoy! Eric

LibreOffice updates for Slackware 14.2 and -current

This month, I am building different versions for LibreOffice, for our stable Slackware 14.2 and for the -current testing ground. During my holiday, new versions became available and last week I built packages from those sources.

The 6.2.6 release which was announced by the Document Foundation two weeks ago brings some security fixes to the 6.2 series. Therefore it was important to get rid of the old 6.2.5 packages. I built 6.2.6 for Slackware 14.2 and those packages have been available for download now since early last week. Go get them!

Note: as of this package release, I am no longer including support for KDE4. The “libreoffice-kde-integration” package is no longer available in my repository and you should “removepkg” the older version if you have that installed. The KDE4 support in LibreOffice has been broken for a while and your Office applications will run great on KDE4 without that “KDE integration”. The LibreOffice UI will be based on GTK3 widgets instead and KDE4’s theming engine will make that its User Interface blends in properly.

For Slackware-current I went for the new 6.3 series of LibreOffice instead. The sources for this new release were made public three weeks ago. The release notes state that the 6.3.x office suite should be a lot faster than the previous 6.2.x series with impressively notched-up interoperability support for the Microsoft Office document formats. Go check it out!

The packages for LibreOffice 6.3.0 which are ready for download in my repository, do contain “libreoffice-kde-integration”, yes! Unlike the packages for Slackware 14.2 I have decided to add KDE5 (aka Plasma5) support to my LibreOffice packages for slackware-current from now on.
If you do not have KDE5 packages installed at all, don’t worry. LibreOffice will work great. The KDE integration package will just not add anything useful for you. On the other hand, if you have Plasma5 installed you will benefit from native file selection dialog windows and other integration features. And even if you do not have Plasma5 but you do have Qt5 installed, then you will be able to run LibreOffice with Qt5 User Interface elements instead of defaulting to GTK3.

If you want to compile these Libreoffice 6.3.0 packages yourself, then be aware that by default no KDE5 support will be added. You will have to set the value of the script parameter “ADD_KDE5” to “YES”. Additionally you will have to install the packages that this functionality depends on. Those are: qt5, libxkbcommon, OpenAL, SDL_sound, and all the packages of KDE Frameworks 5. All of these can be  found in my ‘ktown’ repository: https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/

Enjoy! Eric

LibreOffice 6.2.5 packages available

Earlier this week, the Document Foundation released version 6.2.5 of their office suite LibreOffice. I have built and uploaded sets of packages for Slackware 14.2 and also for -current, 32bits and 64bits.

The Document Foundation themselves finally think that 6.2.x is production ready: “… Users in production environments can start evaluating LibreOffice 6.2.5…“. I was already happy with 6.2.4 and I find the capability to open and work with MS Office documents improving all the time.

Note if you are a KDE Plasma5 user:
The toolbars and menus look ugly in the default UI configuration. There’s a setting in LibreOffice that you need to change so that the Breeze theming for GTK+3 applications does not mess it up anymore. Go to “Tools > Options > Libreoffice > View > Icon Style” and change the “Automatic (Breeze)” to eg. “Elementary”. That will give you back a working toolbar with visible icons.

Enjoy! Eric

This week’s updates: Chromium, LibreOffice, Flash

There was an update to Chromium browser code this week as announced a few days ago by Google. I built new Slackware packages for Chromium 74.0.3729.169 and uploaded them earlier this week to slackware.com and slackware.nl (or you can use any mirror site of course).
There were two intermediate updates to Chromium 74 which I did not compile & package. Both versions address a couple of security issues (CVE’s), but at the time I was unable to work a computer. It’s therefore a good idea to upgrade to this new package.

 

Also this week, the Document Foundation released version 6.2.4 of their office suite LibreOffice. I have built and uploaded sets of packages for Slackware 14.2 and also for -current, 32bits and 64bits.

I had some issues with the visibility of LibreOffice icons in its toolbar recently (last couple of versions of LibreOffice that I built actually).
I am using LibreOffice on Slackare-current with Plasma5 and in the profile script “/etc/profile.d/libreoffice.sh” I have uncommented this line because the GTK+3 widget set usually gives the best possible interface for LO in a Plasma5 desktop:

export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3

However, icons would not show unless you moved the mouse across them, or sometimes even that would not work. In other words, it made working with LO impossible unless I switched the widget support to “generic’ by uncommenting “export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen” in aformentioned profile script instead. But that results in a butt-ugly interface.

By chance I found out that this is caused by a setting in LibreOffice itself. Go to “Tools > Options > Libreoffice > View > Icon Style” and I noticed that the style was set to “Automatic (Breeze)”. I selected “Elementary” instead and voila, I had a working toolbar with visible icons again. For some reason, the integration of GTK+3 applications in Plasma5′ QT5 based interface using the ‘breeze-gtk” package is not fully compatible with the LibreOffice icon handling.
Just so you know.

And finally, there were fresh security updates on the Adobe website for their Flash player plugin. The new version 32.0.0.192 which was released last week (but I missed it) was announced in a security bulletin. I built the packages for the Chromium-compatible and Mozilla-compatible browsers so that you can visit Flash-based web sites safely again (or of course you abandon the use of Flash entirely).

Who is still using these Flash plugin packages?

 

Where to find my packages? In any case, on these three sites. And slackware.nl as well as slackware.uk also offer rsync access:

Have fun! Eric

Updated multilib, chromium. Arriving soon: new libreoffice

The Chromium 72 code was released a few days ago by Google. I built new Slackware packages for Chromium 72.0.3626.81 during the weekend and they are ready for download now on slackware.com or slackware.nl, or any other mirror of course.
There’s a sizable number of CVE’s mentioned in the ChangeLog that were fixed in this release. Therefore it’s a good idea to upgrade today.
I verified that the Widevine CDM is still working, so your Netflix movie streaming is not affected by the upgrade.

 

 Patrick updated the glibc package in slackware-current to the 2.29 release, so I could not stay behind. A new multilib version of the glibc package (also 2.29) is now available in the ‘multilib‘ package repository. I also updated all the ‘compat32’ packages to their latest Slackware versions. Update and enjoy a hassle-free Slackware environment where everything ‘just works’.

 

The Document Foundation released version 6.1.4 of their office suite Libre Office back on 18 December 2018. I fell ill on the 18th so I missed all the fun. I am working my way back through important software releases and now is the time to start building this version of LibreOffice for Slackware.
I need to compile four sets of packages: for Slackware 14.2 and -current, 32bits and 64bits. That means lots of compile time, so don’t expect new packages in the next few days. They will arrive in the repository eventually. Subscribe to the RSS feed of my ChangeLog if you want to know when.

Have fun! Eric

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