Build for Android

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

Build the Android app

These instructions build the Collabora Office app for Android. The native parts must be built on Linux; you build the engine first, then the app, from the same monorepo.

Requirements

  • A computer running Linux. The native parts of the Android app cannot currently be built on Windows.
  • The Android platform tools, including a compatible NDK. Builds have been tested with Android NDK 23.0.7599858; other NDK versions may or may not work.
  • An Android or ChromeOS device, or a simulator. The app can run in a simulator, though some bugs may appear in a simulator but not on a physical device or vice versa — if you can, build and run on a physical device. Connect the device or simulator to your computer using adb.

Clone the monorepo

All the source code now lives in a single Gerrit monorepo; the former Collabora Office core is the engine/ subdirectory of the online repo, so there is no separate repository to clone any more. Code review happens on Gerrit, not GitHub pull requests; see the first contribution guide for the full workflow.

Collabora Online is hosted on Gerrit as a single monorepo: all the source code lives in one repository, with the former Collabora Office core under engine/.

For an anonymous read-only clone (no account needed):

git clone https://gerrit.collaboraoffice.com/online collabora-office

If you have a Gerrit account and plan to push changes for review, clone over SSH instead:

git clone ssh://YOUR_USERNAME@gerrit.collaboraoffice.com:29418/online collabora-office

See the first contribution guide for the full Gerrit workflow (SSH key, commit-msg hook, pushing to refs/for/main).

Switch to the local clone’s directory:

cd collabora-office

Build the engine

The engine lives under engine/ inside the monorepo - that is where you do the engine build:

The former Collabora Office core lives inside the online monorepo under engine/, so a separate clone is no longer needed. If you have not cloned the monorepo yet, run the clone-online step above first. Then move into the engine tree:

cd engine
git checkout main

For a localized (translated) user interface, also clone the translations repository into engine/translations (you are now inside engine/); the engine’s --with-lang picks up the .po files from there:

git clone https://gerrit.collaboraoffice.com/translations translations

If you already have the monorepo cloned for another job, you may use git worktrees to speed up this step.

Configure

Decide what architecture you are going to build for. This will depend on your android device’s ABI. We support building for armeabi-v7a, arm64-v8a, x86 and x86_64.

If you’re not sure what your phone’s architecture is, you can either research online or use adb to get a list of valid architectures

$ adb shell getprop ro.product.cpu.abilist
arm64-v8a,armeabi-v7a,armeabi

Create a file called autogen.input in the engine/ directory with the following content:

--build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
--with-android-ndk=/home/$USER/Android/Sdk/ndk/23.0.7599858
--with-android-sdk=/home/$USER/Android/Sdk
--enable-sal-log
--enable-dbgutil

You also need to add a line specifying which architecture you’re building for

For arm64-v8a

--with-distro=CPAndroidAarch64

For armeabi-v7a

--with-distro=CPAndroid

For x86_64

--with-distro=CPAndroidX86_64

For x86

--with-distro=CPAndroidX86

For example, if you have a device that supports arm64-v8a your autogen.input should contain this content

--build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
--with-android-ndk=/home/$USER/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle
--with-android-sdk=/home/$USER/Android/Sdk
--enable-sal-log
--with-distro=CPAndroidAarch64
--enable-dbgutil

Finally, run

./autogen.sh

Build

Run make and wait a while for the build to finish…

make

Build Collabora Office

POCO and libzstd are built as part of the engine, one copy per ABI, and taken from its workdir, so they no longer need to be built separately for Android.

Configure

Let’s set some variables based on what we just built…

export ABI=arm64-v8a
export CO_BUILDDIR=/opt/libreoffice

…remember to change your ABI to the ABI you’re building the app for, and CO_BUILDDIR to the engine/ subdirectory of the monorepo where you built the engine.

Now step back to the top of the monorepo (one level up from engine/) and configure the Collabora Office build

cd ..
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-androidapp \
            --with-lo-builddir=${CO_BUILDDIR} \
            --enable-debug \
            --with-android-abi=${ABI}

Build

Once again, after configuring the build you can run it with make

make

Build the app

Option 1: Using Android studio

This is the recommended way to build the Android app

  • Open Android studio
  • Open the android subdirectory as a project
  • Use build -> make project to run the build

Option 2: Using gradle from the command line

It may be harder to debug the app without using Android Studio. Unless you have prior experience with debugging Android apps outside Android Studio (or otherwise aren’t able to use Android Studio) we recommend you follow Option 1

cd android
./gradlew build

Debugging

To debug the native engine code in Android Studio, you need the debugging symbols and to setup Android Studio to actually read & use them.

Add android/obj/local/armeabi-v7a from the engine as a Symbol Directory

In Android Studio, choose Run -> Debug… -> Edit Configurations…

There go to the Android App -> app, choose the Debugger tab, and:

Debug type: Auto (or Dual)

Symbol Directories: here add the full path, like…

/local/libreoffice/master-android/android/obj/local/${ABI}

…making sure to substitute ${ABI} for the ABI you builts for

This path contains the non-stripped version of the liblo-native-code.so, and the debugger will read the symbols from that one (even if the APK contains the stripped version). NB ensure that this is before any internal source directories - since the internal source contains stripped native code.

Alternatively you can add the following to your ~/.lldbinit instead:

settings set target.inline-breakpoint-strategy always
settings append target.exec-search-paths /local/libreoffice/master-android/android/obj/local/${ABI}

To use pretty printers for types like OUString, add the following to your ~/.lldbinit:

command script import '/local/libreoffice/master-android/solenv/lldb/libreoffice/LO.py'

From now on, you will be able to debug directly in the Android Studio debugger. Happy debugging!

Cross-compiling with icecream to speed up your build

If you use icecream for parallel building, you can use it for cross-compilation too.

# first generate a tarball with the toolchain (once)
icecc-create-env ~/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/armv7a-linux-androideabi21-clang ~/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/armv7a-linux-androideabi21-clang++

And add it and the paths to the compiler as the first things to the autogen.input:

CC=icecc [here copy what the output of ./autogen.sh without icecream said for C compiler]
CXX=icecc [here copy what the output of ./autogen.sh without icecream said for C++ compiler]
ICECC_VERSION=/path/to/the/tarball/generated/above/955ceb546ceb7a5715bf0223ddd788fe.tar.gz
--with-parallelism=[amount of cpu threads in your icecream farm]
--enable-icecream
[...the original autogen.input...]

So the result will look something like this:

CC=icecc /home/$USER/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/clang -mthumb -march=armv7-a -mfloat-abi=softfp -mfpu=neon -Wl,--fix-cortex-a8 -gcc-toolchain /home/$USER/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle/to>
CXX=icecc /home/$USER/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/clang++ -mthumb -march=armv7-a -mfloat-abi=softfp -mfpu=neon -Wl,--fix-cortex-a8 -gcc-toolchain /home/$USER/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle>
ICECC_VERSION=/local/libreoffice/android/955ceb546ceb7a5715bf0223ddd788fe.tar.gz
--with-parallelism=25
--enable-icecream
--build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
--with-android-ndk=/home/$USER/Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle
--with-android-sdk=/home/$USER/Android/Sdk
--with-distro=CPAndroid
--enable-sal-log
Edit page

build make
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