Are you familiar with iOS development environment and interested to learn more while helping the project?

How to build the iOS app:

1) Build the LibreOfficeKit code for iOS

on a Mac

1.1) First you need to build the LibreOfficeKit code (LibreOffice core) for iOS. For the build dependencies, it is the best to install LODE, the LibreOffice Development Environment and add its bin directory to the PATH. Then get LibreOffice core source code and put in your autogen.input something like this:

# Comment out for production builds
--enable-debug
--enable-dbgutil

# Standard build options
--enable-werror
--enable-symbols
--with-myspell-dicts
--with-distro=LibreOfficeiOS
--with-lang=ar bg ca cs da de el en-US en-GB eo es eu fi fr gl he hr hu id is it ja ko lo nb nl oc pl pt pt-BR sq ru sk sl sv tr uk vi zh-CN zh-TW

and build “normally”. (Naturally, no unit tests will be run when cross-compiling LibreOffice.) Of course there is no requirement to use those –enable options; as a minimum, just --with-distro=LibreOfficeiOS should work.

This will produce a large number of static archives (.a) here and there in instdir and workdir, but no app that can be run as such. (You can see a list of them in workdir/CustomTarget/ios/ios-all-static-libs.list)

2) Build COOL Dependencies

on a Mac

PYTHON MODULES and NODEJS

2.1.1) Install the following Python modules:

/usr/bin/pip3 install polib
/usr/bin/pip3 install lxml

2.1.2) Install nodejs from https://nodejs.org/en/download (macOS pkg). This package provides npm and node commands that are required to build everything in browser/ folder.

POCO LIBRARY

2.2.1) The below instructions are for the so-called basic edition of poco 1.10.1. (If there has been a newer release of poco by the time you read this, adapt as necessary.) Get the poco library source code from https://pocoproject.org/releases/poco-1.10.1/ , the poco-1.10.1.tar.gz archive.

2.2.2) Unpack in some suitable location.

2.2.3) Compile. Note: in the second command, force path to load /usr/bin/python3 and set the minimum iOS version to match the LibreOffice build:

./configure --config=iPhone --static --no-tests --no-samples --omit=Data/ODBC,Data/MySQL --prefix=$HOME/poco-ios-arm64

PATH="/usr/bin:$PATH" make POCO_TARGET_OSARCH=arm64 IPHONE_SDK_VERSION_MIN=14.5 -s -j4

make POCO_TARGET_OSARCH=arm64 install

This will install the poco static libraries and headers to your $HOME directory into poco-ios-arm64 directory. You can change the directory to your wishes, but by installing it this way into a directory in $HOME it doesn’t pollute your root directories, doesn’t need root permissions and can be removed easily.

ZSTD LIBRARY

2.3.1) The below instructions are for the so-called basic edition of zstd 1.5.2. (If there has been a newer release of zstd by the time you read this, adapt as necessary.) Get the zstd library source code from https://github.com/facebook/zstd/releases/tag/v1.5.2/ , the zstd-1.5.2.tar.gz archive.

Alternatively you can use the helper script to build libzstd for iOS: https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online/blob/master/scripts/build-zstd-ios.sh

2.3.2) Unpack in some suitable location.

2.3.3) Compile. Note: in the first command, force SDK to iOS and set the minimum iOS version to match the LibreOffice build:

CC="/usr/bin/clang -arch arm64 -isysroot /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS16.2.sdk -target arm64-apple-ios14.5" make

make DESTDIR=$HOME/zstd-ios-arm64 install

Important: the following command deletes any shared libraries that may have been installed in the previous command. This is important because recent versions of Xcode will link to a dynamic library if it exists in the same folder as a static library and our iOS app will not run if it is linked to any non-system dynamic libraries:

find "$HOME/zstd-ios-arm64" -name "*.dylib*" -exec rm {} \;

This will install the zstd static libraries and headers to your $HOME directory into zstd-ios-arm64 directory. You can change the directory to your wishes, but by installing it this way into a directory in $HOME it doesn’t pollute your root directories, doesn’t need root permissions and can be removed easily.

3) Build the iOS app

on a Mac

3.1) Do a separate clone of the online repo on macOS.

Run autogen.sh, and configure it with the –enable-iosapp option:

./autogen.sh
./configure \
--enable-iosapp \
--with-app-name="My Own Mobile Office Suite" \
--enable-experimental \
--with-vendor="MyOwnApp" \
--with-lo-builddir=$HOME/path/to/libreoffice/core \
--with-poco-includes=$HOME/poco-ios-arm64/include \
--with-poco-libs=$HOME/poco-ios-arm64/lib \
--with-zstd-includes=$HOME/zstd-ios-arm64/usr/local/include \
--with-zstd-libs=$HOME/zstd-ios-arm64/usr/local/lib

Then run:

(cd browser && make)

The configure script puts the app name as the CFBundleDisplayName property into the ios/Mobile/Info.plist file, and sets up some symbolic links that point to the LibreOffice core source and build directories (which typically will be the same, of course).

3.2) Before opening the Xcode project for the first time

  • seriously consider disabling source code indexing, this spawns a vast number of git processes, and consumes huge amounts of CPU & memory:
Xcode -> Preferences, "Source Control", uncheck "Enable Source Control"

3.3) Now you can open the Mobile Xcode project. Important: you will still need to do some configuration before you can run the iOS app. Xcode is very restrictive and requires the following:

  • Xcode must be signed into an Apple ID that is a member of the Apple Developer Program
  • In the Xcode project’s Signing & Capabilities panel, you must change the Bundle Identifier to a unique bundle ID. To obtain a unique bundle ID, login to your Apple Developer account at https://developer.apple.com and create a unique bundle ID in the Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles page. Be sure to check the Fonts and iCloud options in the Capabilities section. A screen snapshot of a sample unique build ID configuration is here: https://collaboraonline.github.io/images/build-code-ios-bundle-ID-config.png

3.4) Now you can open the Mobile Xcode project, build it, and run it. Note: building for “My Mac (Designed for iPad)” on Mac Silicon will run, but it is unstable. Also, you can’t run in an emulator since LibreOffice for iOS is built for arm64 only. So, effectively, you can only test the build on a real iOS device.

Edit page

build make
Debug CODE

Debug CODE

You need to enable debugging support to do any practical interactive debugging.
Build for Android

Build for Android

Are you familiar with Android development environment and interested to learn more while helping the project?
Build Collabora Online

Build Collabora Online

Are you interested in contributing but don’t know where to start? Head over documentation or start by following these step-by-step instructions and build CODE from scratch.