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Compile LibreOffice on Linux Mint user guide and instructions

by Mountain Computers Inc, Publication Date: Saturday, December 14, 2024

View Count: 136, Keywords: Libre Office, Linux Mint, Compile, User Guide, Hashtags: #LibreOffice #LinuxMint #Compile #UserGuide

I have been contributing the Tagalog translations to the Document Foundation of LibreOffice project since April 2024. It was going to be a year long project and then some.

** Update January 19, 2025 -> the cleaned up shorten compilation steps, refined

What I needed to do was verify translations when I was nearly 80-90% complete and review them in a compiled version of LibreOffice. This is where I learned the compilation process for Linux. What I found difficult was the steps needed to compile it and review the output. I needed a simple guide.

Well, after a few weeks of testing my simple process, here it is. What I learned in the last 30+ hours across three months is the following:

1. pick your Linux distro that you love to contribute to and donate to. for me, Linux Mint

2. know the Linux terminal basic commands to navigate the file system

3. know how to reset your compiling and linux environment back to square one

My first user guide for compiling LibreOffice on Linux Mint. Some of the first steps is just to verify if you have your Linux distribution setup and ready to compile LibreOffice and monitor its progress (

0 bring up a terminal window

1 sudo apt install git

2 sudo apt install htop

3 sudo apt install gparted

and the following is a big dependency download in order to compile (see REF 1)

sudo apt-get install git build-essential zip ccache junit4 libkrb5-dev nasm graphviz python3 python3-dev python3-setuptools qtbase5-dev libkf5coreaddons-dev libkf5i18n-dev libkf5config-dev libkf5windowsystem-dev libkf5kio-dev libqt5x11extras5-dev autoconf libcups2-dev libfontconfig1-dev gperf openjdk-17-jdk doxygen libxslt1-dev xsltproc libxml2-utils libxrandr-dev libx11-dev bison flex libgtk-3-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev ant ant-optional libnss3-dev libavahi-client-dev libxt-dev

4 git clone https://git.libreoffice.org/core {optional destination directory}

...this might take a while

cd core

5 ./autogen.sh --with-lang=tl --with-parallelism=$(nproc)

also add the following to the above if you need to yet it will slow down compilation time

--enable-debug

if you also need to you can use the following command

6 ./configure --with-lang=tl

before you get started, or restart your compilation, use the following command, and I also

7 make clean

and also had to regress to Linux Mint 21 since my latest distro vm had problems - I had to do the following:

sudo apt install gcc-12 g++-12

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test

sudo apt purge libreoffice-core

and again ensure redo the dependencies:

and also if a make file is not created or you get GCC too old error messages.

autoconf

then use this to create the compiled output

8 make

...this might take 15-45 minutes depending on the cores on your distro. for me, i had 2GB of RAM and 4 core at first, then switched it to 8 core after monitoring the progress with the htop command

...when complete you can create the installation

9 make install

once the installer is created you can open your latest compile where the make install created the program...

Compilation complete, launch your compiled version

10 /usr/local/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice

Some technical notes:

a. you might need to download a bunch of dependencies for make of libreoffice

b. you might need to purge the existing libreoffice from the linux distro (see i.)

c. the following directories are interesting to review

./core/translations

./core/program/instdir

./core/program/workdir

d. if you have translation files (.po), they will be in the translations folder. go to your language directory and use the head command to look at some of the .po files if those are related to your tranlsation work.

Some technical commands:

i. sudo apt purge libreoffice-core

ii. htop

iii. rm core -f -r

iv. df -h

v. sudo apt install gparted

vi. sudo apt install git

vii. sudo apt install gcc-12 g++-12

Some utilities to help with monitoring progress:

1) sudo apt install htop

2) change terminal window, edit preferences to 140 columns, 30 rows

3) change display settings to 1440 x 960 (16:10)

4) change the size of your Linux Mint partition to at least 64GB from the Oracle VirtualBox default of 10GB so the core github download and compilation has enough disk space (see example graphic).

Success - Screenshot of Language Options after compile and launch of LibreOffice Writer showing the Tagalog language is an option and it works!

REF 1: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/How_to_build

more to come...

Compile LibreOffice on Linux Mint user guide and instructions

by Mountain Computers Inc, Publication Date: Saturday, December 14, 2024

View Count: 136, Keywords: Libre Office, Linux Mint, Compile, User Guide, Hashtags: #LibreOffice #LinuxMint #Compile #UserGuide

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