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Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:50:02 +0100
From: Herbert Duerr <hdu@apache.org>
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To: dev@openoffice.apache.org
Subject: Re: Ubuntu Build Instructions
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Hi Jan,

On 31.01.2013 14:07, janI wrote:
> Thx for the update, I do however have 2 questions:
>
> - there are 2 build guides for ubuntu:
> http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Building_Guide_AOO/Step_by_step
> http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Build_Instructions
> I think one of them should be deemed outdated and point at the other ?

Good point, I wasn't aware that somebody started that topic on a 
different page name anew. The developer who created the new page 
obviously wasn't aware of the old page either, else he would/should have 
updated it, wouldn't he? Hi Andre ;-)

> - I looked at our buildbot, and copied the configure from there, because of
> that I missed some libraries.
> In your opinion should our guides not correspond with our releases, so
> users can rebuild the release ?
> (I did actually update one of the guides, with the missing libs, but cannot
> find the update right now).

Our releases try to be as cross-platform as possible and that means they 
usually build without the "--with-sytem-*" switches. They also have some 
extra baggage, e.g. they carried the "binfilter", which is not really 
interesting to new developers. Also having to install e.g. mingw just to 
build a DLL that is never needed on Linux is IMHO a gratuitous 
requirement for an aspiring AOO developer.

If one is interested in rebuilding a release bit-by-bit one shouldn't 
look at the configuration the buildbot is using but on the configuration 
details documented on the dev-preview page [1].

[1] 
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Development+Snapshot+Builds

The buildbots are not only for building release, some have different 
purposes, e.g. the linux buildbots for nightly trunk build create usable 
versions but without binfilter or mozilla integration. Their main task 
is to find whether recent commits broke e.g. a dependency like they did 
last night [2].

[2] 
http://ci.apache.org/builders/openoffice-linux64-nightly/builds/502/steps/shell/logs/stdio

The linux buildbots are also a bit "too up to date". Linux is very good 
with backward compatibility but forward compatibility is a problem. To 
build a binaries that run on as many different target systems as 
possible one either has to use the oldest common denominator or one has 
to go to great lengths to make the output binary compatible [3]. Another 
consideration is that ASF infra doesn't like having "old crappy systems" 
in their bot farm which would be a requirement if we tried the first 
approach to maximum binary compatibility. So we use the systems that are 
available at the bot farm and they do a great job in finding interesting 
stuff.

[3] http://www.trevorpounds.com/blog/?p=103

Herbert