Development/Base
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A page to coordinate cross-discipline efforts to develop, document and design Base and to market it to people that may be able to assist with that.
Current situation
Documentation
The documentation team needs a couple of people to join their team to proof-read their unpublished guides and handbooks about Base. Documentation/DocumentationTeamInfo/JoinDocTeam
Java and HSQLDB
Base depends on Java, principally for these modules:
- embedded HSQLDB database
- report builder
- report designer
- (like other parts of LibreOffice) wizards
In the past this has given respectable performance. However their seems to be problems with openjdk-6b>22 and openjdk-7 as well as any normal java more recent than their _24 release. Their _21 seems to be the best for performance in terms of speed and stability. Many distros ship with _20 or _22 which are also quite fine but _21 seems the best.
There are those who want to use a different database and make base, and indeed LibreOffice, Java-free. This could be done if development effort is put into it and it would become an alternative to using embedded HSQLDB and Java.
There are also those who think that Java based applications are fine and there are also legacy users who need to continue with embedded HSQLDB, at least for the present. Hence development effort is needed anyway to get the current Java based system working well.
The embedded HSQLDB is an old version (1.8) which lacks many useful features. When used as a separate back-end HSQLDB, one can use the latest (2.2) which works fine, but the data is then in a separate file and not in the .odb file.
A work in progress to replace HSQLDB with Firebird is tracked here.
Reportbuilder
There is a project to develop a replacement for Oracle Report Builder using the capabilities of writer and calc.
Issues
- The LibreOffice bug reports can be found here (Product: LibreOffice, Component: Database)
- Debian reports are here
- Ubuntu reports are here (search for base)
Resources
The following LibreOffice mailing lists can be used to get involved in this project:
- User support list for questions or help with base;
- A development mailing list for anyone wanting to contribute code or help out with bug fixing;
- Project coordination for offers of help with developing base.
- Branch features/base-preview in git contains backports to stable LibreOffice of many Base enhancements. Currently basically treated as Lionel Mamane's private playground; rebased semi-regularly. Please coordinate with Lionel to add your contributions to this branch. Not currently built by any tinderbox.
It would be best if anyone with an opinion about how base should be developed could contribute to its development. Telling developers what they should do does not really work. If someone wants to get some development done that is not being done then they need to do it themselves or get a friend, their business, their university (student project?), other organisation or pay someone to do it.