Re: We'd like to continue the production of the 32-bit deb packages

Finally sort of solved.

We were not able to get ‘make’ without cppunit errors. Tried numerous times
on VMs with Escuelas Linux and Bodhi Linux (both based on Ubuntu 18.04) and
on Debian 10 (on a VM and on a schroot environment).

What we did if after a ‘make’ with errors, we had to ran ‘make
build-nocheck’ to be able to bypass those errors on a Debian 10 schroot
environment. This time, the required debs files were produced. However,
when installing those debs and trying to run LibreOffice on Escuelas Linux
(the main target distribution) it does not work, as it complains about a
glibc mismatch version. So, it seems that the generated deb files are not
distribution-independent as the ones that were previously released by The
Document Foundation.

Under these circumstances, we then proceeded to create the deb files inside
a Escuelas Linux VM.

In Escuelas Linux (and I guess on any Ubuntu 18.04 system) the command

sudo apt-get build-dep libreoffice

does not install all the required packages to pass the autogen.sh phase, as
we found to be the case in Debian 10. It complains about missing KF5 stuff,
so we installed these (some packages might not be necessary, but at least
this worked)


sudo apt-get install \

 libkf5archive-dev libkf5bookmarks-dev libkf5coreaddons-dev libkf5config-dev \
 libkf5configwidgets-dev libkf5dbusaddons-dev libkf5kio-dev
libkf5widgetsaddons-dev \
 libkf5notifyconfig-dev libkf5newstuff-dev libkf5xmlgui-dev
libkf5declarative-dev \
 libkf5notifications-dev libkf5guiaddons-dev libkf5textwidgets-dev
libkf5iconthemes-dev \
 kdoctools-dev libkf5crash-dev libkf5filemetadata-dev extra-cmake-modules \
 libsm-dev cmake qtdeclarative5-dev kde-runtime kinit  kio \
 qml-module-qtquick-controls

We also had to install qt5-default and libqt5x11extras5-dev.

Just to be sure, we also installed IBM Java, as it is the one used in
Escuelas Linux. Other Java environments have an ugly effect specifically on
LibreOffice 32-bit, as we reported at the time on our blog:

https://sourceforge.net/p/escuelaslinux/blog/2019/03/how-to-fix-libreoffice-startup-crashes-in-escuelas-linux-62-32-bit/

However, switching our distribution to IBM Java solved those issues in a
better way than passing stack_guard_gap=1.

Our autogen.input is:

*--with-distro=LibreOfficeLinux**--disable-gstreamer-0-10**--with-lang=es**--with-myspell-dicts**--enable-release-build**--with-package-format=deb**--disable-dependency-tracking**--with-jdk-home=/usr/lib/jvm/**ibm-java90-jdk-i386**/*

Again, after we got a ‘make’ with errors, we had to ran ‘make
build-nocheck’ to be able to bypass those. The deb files were produced and
seem to be working fine when installed on Escuelas Linux.

As the resulting .deb files does not seem to be distribution independent,
we may not be offering then to download in our SourceForge site as we
planned. If as time passes somebody knows how to solve the make errors we
get, and how to release distro-independent deb packages, we might then
offer LibreOffice 32-bit binary deb builts available for download, for
parties that might be still interested on them.

For now, I’m happy to announce that our upcoming Escuelas Linux version
6.5, will include, among other things, LibreOffice 6.3.0.4 in both of our
editions, 32-bit and 64-bit.

Many thanks to all the folks that helped us in this thread. I owe you a big
beer ;-)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/escuelaslinux/

https://www.facebook.com/escuelas.linux



El vie., 26 jul. 2019 a las 10:01, dreamnext@gmail.com (<dreamnext@gmail.com>)
escribió:

> Hi! Greetings from the Escuelas Linux team. We are small Linux
> distribution that can be downloaded from
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/escuelaslinux/.
> Some more references about our activity can be found by doing an Internet
> search, or on own Facebook account, escuelas.linux
>
> We still provide a 32-bit edition of our distro, because among our users
> there are a lot of low-income public schools, in which are still in use old
> computers with about 512 MB to a 1 GB of RAM. That amount of RAM would make
> running a Linux 64-bit system awfully slow, so we have to accommodate to
> the needs and possibilities of what is available in poor areas, those in
> which even having an old computer is still somehow a luxury.
>
> We perfectly understand that TDF releasing 32-bit Linux LibreOffice
> packages was not worth anymore, given the small amount of downloads.
> Certainly some of those downloads were made by us, as we only required one
> download of a given LibreOffice version to have it installed in our distro
> and be used in hundreds of computers. A lot of those computers could not
> even be traceable, since there are no Internet connection in poor or remote
> schools. But we believe that even if we reported who and where are those
> schools, that would be still a small amount to be worth the effort and
> resources required to match the bigger amounts of downloads that seems to
> be receiving the LibreOffice 32-bit Windows counterpart.
>
> Given that TDF ended the provision of Linux 32-bit distribution neutral
> binaries, but not the 32-bit compatibility, we would like to step up to
> produce by ourselves the 32-bit distribution neutral deb packages from
> LibreOffice 6.3 and up. We are not aware of other distros or volunteers
> releasing the most recent LibreOffice version to date (6.3) as 32-bit
> distribution independent binaries.
>
> Recently, the official LibreOffice Blog published instructions about how
> to compile LibreOffice on Linux. However, we’d like to be able not only to
> compile LibreOffice, but we would like to learn how to be able to produce
> by ourselves the same set of 32-bit distribution-independent deb packages
> that were compressed as a .tar.gz, that is, the LibreOffice binaries
> (LibreOffice_?.?.?_Linux_x86-_deb.tar.gz), the translated user interface
> (the LibreOffice_?.?.?_Linux_x86-_deb_langpack_??.tar.gz) and the offline
> help (LibreOffice_?.?.?_Linux_x86-_deb_helppack_??.tar.gz). As for the user
> interface and the offline packages, our main focus would be Spanish
> language.
>
> On the download section is always available the following source code
> packages:
> libreoffice-?.?.?.?.tar.xz
> libreoffice-dictionaries-?.?.?.?.tar.xz
> libreoffice-help-?.?.?.?.tar.xz
> libreoffice-translations-?.?.?.?.tar.xz
>
> But, given our inexperience, we don’t know how to use this source packages
> to produce the same set of 32-bit deb packages as were previously provided
> by TDF. Since LibreOffice is distributed in a lot of languages, we guess
> that the user interface and offline packages are not created manually one
> by one by hand, some useful scripts could have been created to automate as
> far as possible those tasks.
>
> So, we respectfully ask for some pointers and steps required to reach this
> goal. In this way, we might be able to continue the production of the
> 32-bit deb packages, freeing TDF of that burden as planned but, at the same
> time, we could provide those packages for the parties that could be still
> interested in them. We could not be able to support rpm-based binaries
> though, someone else would have to step up if there's a need for that.
>
> Please let us know if this request of help is feasible for the
> Developer(s) that are responsible of the LibreOffice packaging.