Android/History

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This page contains some History of the processes of developing LibreOffice on Android.

Background

Getting LibreOffice running on Android has been a challenge. Limitations of mobile platforms including screen size, input methods, and restrictions on binaries in the Google Play store have all been significant hurdles to making LibreOffice available in the Android ecosystem.

(Sometimes people don't understand how much work it is to get support up and running for a new platform.. this next section was written to help explain a positive way to contribute :-)

Are we there yet? Is it Ready Yet?

No.

If you are urgently desiring a stable Android release and have a large disposable income, please feel free to donate to the LibreOffice project and accompany your donation with a note indicating that you'd like your funds to go towards development of LibreOffice for Android. Alternatively, you may offer funds for this project via Freedom Sponsors. You'll probably want to mention tdf#60862.

Current Status

LibreOffice4Android

• Iain Billet worked on a LibreOffice document viewer during GSoC 2012.
  • Available daily builds here (you want the LibreOffice4Android-debug.apk)
  • Create a folder named LibreOffice on your sdcard, put at least one file recognized by LibreOffice there
  • To hide the navigation overlay during reading a document, double-tap.

• You can build LO for Android, but it creates a "barely usable (even with keyboard and mouse) office suite on your tablet."

• Daily builds of two experimental apps are produced but they are not really useful for much. Not for "developer testing", any developer should surely build the sgugg himself anyway. Please do not submit bugs.

LibreOffice on Android

• Tomaž Vajngerl describes a different porting approach in his blog entry LibreOffice on Android (2014-07-16).

History (newest update first)

• As of 2014-01-27, android builds were based on tiled-editing branch and were available in the following places:
  • In the Google Play Store
  • In F-Droid -- What is F-droid?
    • F-droid Wiki
    • F-droid Forums
  • Direct link to the latest apk
• 2013-02-00 - Daily builds are (have been?) available.
• 2012-07-03 (per MMeeks' blog) -- Here's what works:
  • Cross-compilation to Android works
  • Basic system functions and bootstrapping works. The UNO run-time runs.
  • Packaging, signing, installing and running the mix of Java, C and C++ code works reasonably reliably
  • Some unit tests work
  • We have a basic VCL / toolkit backend proof-of-concept to allow rendering windows to an Android NativeWindow, and capture event input for a Frankenstein demo.
  • To sum up: we have "a fairly horrific, bolts and all, barely usable (even with keyboard and mouse) office suite on your tablet"

Reports from the Press

• http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-07-03-libreoffice-android.html (2012-07-03)
• http://www.pcworld.com/article/258834/libreoffice_for_android_is_in_the_works.html (2012-07-05)
• http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/libreoffice-for-android-frustratingly-close-to-release/ (2013-03-14)
• http://tomazvajngerl.blogspot.de/2014/07/libreoffice-on-android.html (2014-07-16)
• http://tomazvajngerl.blogspot.de/2014_08_01_archive.html (2014-08-19)
• http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2014/09/04/tender-for-base-framework-for-an-android-version-of-libreoffice-with-basic-editing-capabilities-201409-01/ (2014-09-04)
• http://www.ahunt.org/2014/09/libreoffice-on-android-3-calc-documents/ (2014-09-11)

See also

• Development/BuildingForAndroid