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4 LibreOffice is an integrated office suite based on copyleft licenses
5 and compatible with most document formats and standards. Libreoffice
6 is backed by The Document Foundation, which represents a large
7 independent community of enterprises, developers and other volunteers
8 moved by the common goal of bringing to the market the best software
9 for personal productivity. LibreOffice is open source, and free to
10 download, use and distribute.
12 A quick overview of the LibreOffice code structure.
16 You can develop for LibreOffice in one of two ways, one
17 recommended and one much less so. First the somewhat less recommended
18 way: it is possible to use the SDK to develop an extension,
19 for which you can read the API docs [here](https://api.libreoffice.org/)
20 and [here](https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide).
21 This re-uses the (extremely generic) UNO APIs that are also used by
22 macro scripting in StarBasic.
24 The best way to add a generally useful feature to LibreOffice
25 is to work on the code base however. Overall this way makes it easier
26 to compile and build your code, it avoids any arbitrary limitations of
27 our scripting APIs, and in general is far more simple and intuitive -
28 if you are a reasonably able C++ programmer.
30 ## The build chain and runtime baselines
32 These are the current minimal operating system and compiler versions to
33 run and compile LibreOffice, also used by the TDF builds:
37 * Build: Cygwin + Visual Studio 2017
40 * Build: 10.13.2 + Xcode 9.3
42 * Runtime: RHEL 7 or CentOS 7
43 * Build: either GCC 7.0.0; or Clang 5.0.2 with libstdc++ 7.3.0
44 * iOS (only for LibreOfficeKit):
45 * Runtime: 11.4 (only support for newer i devices == 64 bit)
46 * Build: Xcode 9.3 and iPhone SDK 11.4
48 If you want to use Clang with the LibreOffice compiler plugins, the minimal
49 version of Clang is 5.0.2. Since Xcode doesn't provide the compiler plugin
50 headers, you have to compile your own Clang to use them on macOS.
52 You can find the TDF configure switches in the distro-configs/ directory.
54 To setup your initial build environment on Windows and macOS, we provide
55 the LibreOffice Development Environment
56 ([LODE](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/lode)) scripts.
58 For more information see the build instructions for your platform in the
59 [TDF wiki](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development).
61 ## The important bits of code
63 Each module should have a `README` file inside it which has some
64 degree of documentation for that module; patches are most welcome to
65 improve those. We have those turned into a web page here:
67 https://docs.libreoffice.org/
69 However, there are two hundred modules, many of them of only
70 peripheral interest for a specialist audience. So - where is the
71 good stuff, the code that is most useful. Here is a quick overview of
72 the most important ones:
75 ----------|-------------------------------------------------
76 sal/ | this provides a simple System Abstraction Layer
77 tools/ | this provides basic internal types: 'Rectangle', 'Color' etc.
78 vcl/ | this is the widget toolkit library and one rendering abstraction
79 framework | UNO framework, responsible for building toolbars, menus, status bars, and the chrome around the document using widgets from VCL, and XML descriptions from */uiconfig/* files
80 sfx2/ | legacy core framework used by Writer/Calc/Draw: document model / load/save / signals for actions etc.
81 svx/ | drawing model related helper code, including much of Draw/Impress
86 ----------|-------------------------------------------------
87 desktop/ | this is where the 'main' for the application lives, init / bootstrap. the name dates back to an ancient StarOffice that also drew a desktop
92 There are several other libraries that are helpful from a graphical perspective:
95 ----------|-------------------------------------------------
96 basegfx/ | algorithms and data-types for graphics as used in the canvas
97 canvas/ | new (UNO) canvas rendering model with various backends
98 cppcanvas/ | C++ helper classes for using the UNO canvas
99 drawinglayer/ | View code to render drawable objects and break them down into primitives we can render more easily.
101 ## Rules for #include directives (C/C++)
103 Use the `"..."` form if and only if the included file is found next to the
104 including file. Otherwise, use the `<...>` form. (For further details, see the
105 mail [Re: C[++]: Normalizing include syntax ("" vs
106 <>)](https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2017-November/078778.html).)
108 The UNO API include files should consistently use double quotes, for the
109 benefit of external users of this API.
111 loplugin:includeform (compilerplugins/clang/includeform.cxx) enforces these rules.
116 Beyond this, you can read the `README` files, send us patches, ask
117 on the mailing list libreoffice@lists.freedesktop.org (no subscription
118 required) or poke people on IRC `#libreoffice-dev` on irc.freenode.net -
119 we're a friendly and generally helpful mob. We know the code can be
120 hard to get into at first, and so there are no silly questions.