on LinuxTag, I got in touch with OpenOffice developers, and had an interesting conversation off-list with Chris Halls, a debian developer, who is trying to use kaffe instead of JDK to build OpenOffice. According to debian policies, as long as OpenOffice can't be built using free tools exclusively, it can't be moved into the free software section. Getting kaffe to build openoffice would be very nice. It would also be appreciated by OpenOffice developers on platforms without a port of a recent JDK, like BeOS, from what I've heard on LinuxTag.
Chris' sent me an e-mail about kaffe and openoffice last week, part of which I'd like to quote here:
---quote--
>>So I'd like to have some pointers as to where to start getting in >>> >touch with the developers from 'fringe' OpenOffice platforms, as well >>> >as to a document describing the OpenOffice's requirements for a Java >>> >environment in more detail. Finally, pointers to appropriate mailing >>> >lists would be great. > >> >> There is some work going on. Have a look at Issue 16252: >> http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=16252
The JDK is used in OOo in several different ways:
- Some tools needed to build essential parts of OOo are in Java. The projects that I know of that needs these are officecfg and readlicense_oo. The patch I made for IZ16252 makes it possible to build these using Kaffe.
- Support for various optional features of OOo, using the UNO Java bridge
which allows components to be written in Java. I have not looked at this
yet.
- Some C++ projects need JNI, such as jvmaccess. These modules do not compile with Kaffe because bridges/source/jni_uno/jni_base.h needs JNIEnv_::ExceptionCheck() from jni.h.
I have been concentrating so far on getting OOo built without Java support, which only needs the build tools. Theoretically, it should be possible to do this without patches just by unsetting SOLAR_JAVA, but it hasn't been tested since before 1.1 and needs various changes. I have several changes on my disk, which I need to turn into IZ patches when I have time. I have amnaged to build about 70% of OOo so far with Kaffe as JDK and SOLAR_JAVA unset.
---quote--
As a quick heads up to kaffe developers: that means we're about 70% there with kaffe 1.1.0. Latest kaffe from CVS also includes JNIEnv_::ExceptionCheck() (thanks to Mark Wielaard's work on getting java-gnome and snark to run on kaffe), so this should help building the C++ projects that need JNI as well.
Since we are scheduled to release the next developer release of kaffe, 1.1.1, next weekend, it will be interesting to see how well that release fares for open office builds. And of course, it would be nice to see Chris' patches going in into OpenOffice, unless they have been applied already.
I hope we can get some input from OpenOffice developers on what needs to be fixed in kaffe to allow OOo to build. And who knows, we may even exchange some contributions ;)
cheers, dalibor topic
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