[Libreoffice] Kicking off 3rdparty packages

[Francois Tigeot]

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 08:36:35AM -0700, Tor Lillqvist wrote:
> > it ships own copies of dozens of standard 3rd-party packages,
> 
> "standard" from the viewpoint of up-to-date Linux distros, that is. Don't forget that LibreOffice is supposed to run also on not-so-up-to-date Linux installations.
> 
> And of course, various other Unixes too (although I don't know if we have any active builders/packagers except for BSDs), on which one can be even les sure that there are up-to-date "standard" 3rd-party packages available.

Up-to-date software can also be used on old Unixes / Linux systems without too
much pain.
In some of my previous jobs, I had to manage software installations for systems
running such things as OSF/1, AIX, Solaris/Sparc, Irix, etc...

There are all sorts of solutions:

- using the vendor framework (if they still care/are alive)
- installation by hand (configure / make / make install)
- lightweight management with tools such as stow:
  http://unmaintainable.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/package-management-using-stow/
- using a third-party framework. Two of them come to mind:
  - OpenPKG http://www.openpkg.org/
  - pkgsrc  http://www.netbsd.org/docs/software/packages.html#platforms

IMHO, there's no reason to include old versions of third-party packages in
LibreOffice proper.

In addition to all the included junk, I remember OpenOffice needing a
special-purpose version of gcc to be compiled.

Should we go the same path again ?

-- 
Francois Tigeot