Building LibreOffice for Android

[Tor Lillqvist]

> I would like to build LibreOffice for Android.

Well, there is nothing called "LibreOffice for Android". Yet. That
sounds as if it meant something functionally equivalent to the full
LibreOffice on desktop OSes. And whether that is even something we
want is unclear.

What you can do is compile most of the LibreOffice C++ (and some C)
code for Android, sure. And then you can use that as a native library
from Android apps (written in Java, with all the GUI done in Java
using the normal Android APIs). We have two such apps in the sources,
"DocumentLoader" and "LIbreOffice4Android". (See the
android/experimental subdirectory in the sources.) They are both quite
crude and experimental. And with document *viewing* functionality
only. Definitely not something that one could with a straight face
call "LibreOffice for Android". (Except in a marketing sense.)

> but still I would pick an Alpha version or something
> around those lines if there is one.

When you say "pick", I hope you don't mean that you are not interested
in building and working on it, but just want to "test" it? Such
testing is really not needed at this stage. It is blatantly obvious to
those working on the code what problems there are... (But if you
insist in seeing something pre-built, look under
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/Android-ARM@24-Bytemark-Hosting/master/
)

What we really need is more people who are able to build the code and
work on improving it (especially the Android-specific Java layer)
themselves. You need to be running Linux or Mac OS X as Windows is not
suited for building LibreOffice for Android. Clone our "core" git
repository and learn how to build LibreOffice for your native platform
first. And then build for Android: Read README.cross and
README.Android. Join our development IRC channel and ask for advice;
best during European working hours and evenings.

--tml