This document discusses easy hacks that new developers can contribute to LibreOffice. It encourages starting with small, easy tasks like fixing comments, writing unit tests, or confirming bugs to learn the codebase. Examples of easy hacks include converting unit tests, signing binaries during build, translating documentation, and improving dialog design. Developers are guided to the LibreOffice wiki for a list of easy hack ideas and instructions for getting started, building the code, submitting patches for review, and other ways to contribute without coding like helping users or testing daily builds.

1. Easy Hacking
LibreOffice
Cor Nouws – Rob Snelders
T-Dose 2013

2. New LibreOffice 4.0/4.1
Impress
Remote
Control

3. New LibreOffice 4.0/4.1
VISIO Import
Publisher Import

4. New LibreOffice 4.0/4.1
CMIS support

5. New LibreOffice 4.0/4.1
• Better interopability with MSOffice
• Breaking old UNO API
• Dropped support old formats
• LibreOffice theme

6. LibreOffice Cloud
• https://www.rollapp.com/search?
query=libreoffice

7. In the background...
• Gerrit for code-review
• Ported to gnumake
• Authomatic builds for different
platforms
• More cleanups and code
simplifications

8. But also...
● ~500 dialog-markups moved to glade2
● Add keywords to *.desktop files
● Add Hide/Show to tabs-menu in Calc
● Add Shift-F5 to start presentation on
current slide
● Only en-US-helppack should contain
en-US-help
● And ~135 other EasyHacks

9. Easy Hacks?!

10. Why Easy Hacks?!
• Easy to start for new developers
• Pointers & Help from experienced
developers
• learn to know code & developers
• Very good for LibreOffice
• You become ready for larger hacks

11. Easy Hacks … how ?!
• build & run
• Choose easyhack
• Send patch

12. Build & run
www.libreoffice.org/developers

13. Choose easyhack
• Clean code
• Translate comments
• Fix bugs
• Make extra funcionality
•wiki.documentfoundation
.org/Development/Easy_Hacks

14. Send patch
• License: LGPLv3+ / MPL
• Gerrit for review
• Features included in next major
release
• Bugs mainly faster

15. Examples
• Convert C++ unit test from JUnit to CppUnit
• Write more unittests for regression hotspots
• sign windows binaries during build
• Remove LibreOffice icon themes hardcoding
• Move dialog-markups to glade2 (~100 dialogs to
go)
• Translate comments
• Move BSA from parsing HTML to XML-RPC
• … etc. (wiki.documentfoundation
.org/Development/Easy_Hacks)
• … your own idea

16. Not coding?
• Confirm bugs (bugs.freedesktop.org)
• Provide stacktraces for crashes
• Bibisect regressions in LibreOffice
• Translate Documentation
• Help users on ask.libreoffice.org
• Run, test and torture daily builds
• Improve dialog-design in glade2
• … etc. (wiki.documentfoundation
.org/Development/Easy_Hacks)
• … your own idea

17. Questions?
Attribution-NonCommercial-Sh
areAlike CC BY-NC-SA
Rob Snelders – libreoffice AT ertai DOT nl
Cor Nouws – cno AT nouenoff DOT nl

18. Dutch Comminity
•
•
•
•
•
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Main_Page/nl
Wiki with dates for Dutch Community events
users@nl.libreoffice.org ← Dutch Userslist
discuss@nl.libreoffice.org ← Dutch Communitylist
http://nl.libreoffice.org ← Dutch website