[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 111436] Allow external tools to interact with LibreOffice running inside Flatpak, include Java JARs

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111436

--- Comment #4 from Stephan Bergmann <sbergman at redhat.com> ---
When external (C++ or Java) programs want to communicate with LO via the UNO
Remote Protocol (URP), those programs need access to certain libraries (C++
dynamic libraries or Java jars, resp.) and helper data and code files (e.g.,
even in the case of Java jars, these reference native code that is implemented
in helper native dynamic libraries; see
<https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/OpenOffice.org_Developers_Guide>
for details on all this).

LO includes all these files, so one way of obtaining access to those files is
to ask the LO installation that the external program wants to target about the
location of those files.  This is done with the unoinfo helper executable (see
desktop/README.md for details).  However, in the case of flatpak, something
like `flatpak run --command=/app/libreoffice/program/unoinfo
org.libreoffice.LibreOffice java` isn't useful to a program outside the LO
flatpak sandbox, as the reported paths don't exist outside that flatpak.  So,
to make that work, some way of accessing a flatpak's arbitrary data and code
files from outside the flatpak would be necessary, and some mechanism by which
the paths that unoinfo reports can be mapped from flatpak-internal to
flatpak-external paths.

However, URP and the software artefacts necessary to speak it are evolved
compatibly, so it generally works to make an external program use such files
that don't come from the targeted LO installation, but rather from a different
source.  There has been such a standalone UNO Runtime Environment (URE) in the
past, but it has been abandoned for lack of maintenance support (though its
traces and concepts are still there in the code, and e.g. some Linux distros
still maintain it as a separate LO sub-package).  Such a URE running outside
the flatpak (and potentially bundled with the external program) would be an
alternative approach to solve this issue.

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