5 ms·

Why I love hacking at LibreOffice

96 points by davidgerard 11y ago

chris_wot 11y ago
Oh! I wasn't expecting this to get onto HN :-) If anyone wants to contribute to LibreOffice, hope onto Freenode #libreoffice-dev and say hi :-) it's a massive project, but there are bite sized projects that you can tackle, and even if you struggle at first nobody will mind. It's a fun project, so give it a try! Any Australians in Sydney who might be interested in hacking at LO, let me know!
- keithpeter 11y ago
  Well done all of you, I use your work every day. Please, please be very conservative with UI changes.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Late reply: thanks :-) I'm certain the design team are being very careful in the changes they are making to the UI. The design team's page can be found here: https://www.libreoffice.org/community/design/ https://www.libreoffice.org/community/design/ Their blog can be found here: https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org
ape4 11y ago
Its a pretty important project.
PeterWhittaker 11y ago
tl;dr? The people. The author indicates that the LibreOffice community is filled with people of good humour who help those not as expert as themselves.
tcopeland 11y ago
> the incremental improvements have been increasing at a rate of knots and folks are beginning to notice the positive effects Right on. I see this at $DAY_JOB too; after a certain amount of cleanup and dead code deletion and whatnot suddenly things start getting implemented faster, small bugs are fixed more easily, TODOs and FIXMEs start disappearing from the codebase, etc. Good stuff!
systems 11y ago
what programming languages do i need to know to hack on libreoffice?
- luch 11y ago
  Mostly C++ and a string search utility (like grep) since the codebase is massive. There are others languages (I recall Java and Perl) but their use are marginal.
  - buovjaga 11y ago
    Python is used as well: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Python_Unit_Tests https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Python_Unit_... Web developers and sysadmins are also most welcome! https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Website https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Website https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Infra/AdminTeam https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Infra/AdminTeam
elcapitan 11y ago
For people who want to get involved, is there a list of starting points? (like low hanging fruit type of tickets to get into the codebase)
- dfrankow 11y ago
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks
Yhippa 11y ago
I had to install LibreOffice recently to generate some forms and PDFs and I was very impressed. It's come a long way since I last messed with it several years ago. Makes me want to contribute but it's been way too long since I last touched C++ and I'm mostly a Java developer now.
- buovjaga 11y ago
  If you are also comfortable with Python, you could help with this task of converting unit tests from Java to Python: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GetInvolved/DeveloperStepByStep/javapython https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GetInvolved/...
dfrankow 11y ago
I wonder what the simplest changes to the codebase are that would make it much smaller. I wonder if there are tools that would make suggestions.
- dfrankow 11y ago
  A detailed post related to this: https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2013-06-13-under-the-hood.html https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2013-06-13-under-the-...
  - buovjaga 11y ago
    More: https://www.gnome.org//~michael/blog/2014-01-30-under-the-hood.html https://www.gnome.org//~michael/blog/2014-01-30-under-the-ho... https://www.gnome.org//~michael/blog/2014-07-29-under-the-hood-4-3.html https://www.gnome.org//~michael/blog/2014-07-29-under-the-ho... https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-29-under-the-hood-4-4.html https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-29-under-the-... https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under-the-hood-5-0.html https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under-the-... Keep an eye on 5.1 as well :) https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan/5.1 https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan/5.1
grandinj 11y ago
I love hacking on LibreOffice because nobody else lets me do static analysis on 10 million lines of code and make it better. Most places just throw up their hands in despair and become too afraid to touch anything. Also, the people are great!
davidgerard 11y ago
I'm the guy Chris mentioned who noted 5.0 feeling noticeably faster than 4.4 (because they cleaned up the VCL timers) and how fascinating the details of a project doing an apparently-boring job can be :-)
- chris_wot 11y ago
  You are seriously our biggest fan :-)

96 points by davidgerard 11y ago

Oh! I wasn't expecting this to get onto HN :-) If anyone wants to contribute to LibreOffice, hope onto Freenode #libreoffice-dev and say hi :-) it's a massive project, but there are bite sized projects that you can tackle, and even if you struggle at first nobody will mind. It's a fun project, so give it a try! Any Australians in Sydney who might be interested in hacking at LO, let me know!

keithpeter 11y ago
Well done all of you, I use your work every day. Please, please be very conservative with UI changes.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Late reply: thanks :-) I'm certain the design team are being very careful in the changes they are making to the UI. The design team's page can be found here: https://www.libreoffice.org/community/design/ https://www.libreoffice.org/community/design/ Their blog can be found here: https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org

ape4 11y ago

Its a pretty important project.

PeterWhittaker 11y ago

tl;dr? The people. The author indicates that the LibreOffice community is filled with people of good humour who help those not as expert as themselves.

tcopeland 11y ago

> the incremental improvements have been increasing at a rate of knots and folks are beginning to notice the positive effects Right on. I see this at $DAY_JOB too; after a certain amount of cleanup and dead code deletion and whatnot suddenly things start getting implemented faster, small bugs are fixed more easily, TODOs and FIXMEs start disappearing from the codebase, etc. Good stuff!

systems 11y ago

what programming languages do i need to know to hack on libreoffice?

luch 11y ago
Mostly C++ and a string search utility (like grep) since the codebase is massive. There are others languages (I recall Java and Perl) but their use are marginal.
- buovjaga 11y ago
  Python is used as well: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Python_Unit_Tests https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Python_Unit_... Web developers and sysadmins are also most welcome! https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Website https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Website https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Infra/AdminTeam https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Infra/AdminTeam

elcapitan 11y ago

For people who want to get involved, is there a list of starting points? (like low hanging fruit type of tickets to get into the codebase)

dfrankow 11y ago
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks

Yhippa 11y ago

I had to install LibreOffice recently to generate some forms and PDFs and I was very impressed. It's come a long way since I last messed with it several years ago. Makes me want to contribute but it's been way too long since I last touched C++ and I'm mostly a Java developer now.

buovjaga 11y ago
If you are also comfortable with Python, you could help with this task of converting unit tests from Java to Python: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GetInvolved/DeveloperStepByStep/javapython https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GetInvolved/...

dfrankow 11y ago

I wonder what the simplest changes to the codebase are that would make it much smaller. I wonder if there are tools that would make suggestions.

dfrankow 11y ago
A detailed post related to this: https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2013-06-13-under-the-hood.html https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2013-06-13-under-the-...
- buovjaga 11y ago
  More: https://www.gnome.org//~michael/blog/2014-01-30-under-the-hood.html https://www.gnome.org//~michael/blog/2014-01-30-under-the-ho... https://www.gnome.org//~michael/blog/2014-07-29-under-the-hood-4-3.html https://www.gnome.org//~michael/blog/2014-07-29-under-the-ho... https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-29-under-the-hood-4-4.html https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-29-under-the-... https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under-the-hood-5-0.html https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under-the-... Keep an eye on 5.1 as well :) https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan/5.1 https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan/5.1

grandinj 11y ago

I love hacking on LibreOffice because nobody else lets me do static analysis on 10 million lines of code and make it better. Most places just throw up their hands in despair and become too afraid to touch anything. Also, the people are great!

davidgerard 11y ago

I'm the guy Chris mentioned who noted 5.0 feeling noticeably faster than 4.4 (because they cleaned up the VCL timers) and how fascinating the details of a project doing an apparently-boring job can be :-)

chris_wot 11y ago
You are seriously our biggest fan :-)