This page describes the structure of the Apache OpenOffice 3.4 (AOO3.4) release, the project's trunk and questions related to these and their structure. It is intended e.g. to help reviewing a release candidate. A summary of the activities that we undertook to get us to this point are described in Summary of Apache OpenOffice 3.4 IP Review Activities Additional information can also be found under IP Plan for Apache OpenOffice.
Q: How is a AOO3.4 release structured?
A: The AOO3.4 release is composed of two main parts, the source package and binary packages.
Q: What is contained in the source package of the release?
A: The source package contains the full set of files from which the binary packages are created. It contains all files necessary to build a version of AOO3.4 by externals. It includes all files from the project trunk which are under ALv2 Apache license and files under Apache category A license, thus these file collections allow to build complete, ALv2-compatible versions of AOO3.4. For information how to build AOO3.4 based on this file sets, see here. Detailed information about e.g. signature and examples based on the current developer snapshots can be found here.
Q: What is contained in the binary package of the release?
A: The binary packages will consist of several full installation sets, one for each language and platform combination. For a release candidate these will be signed to allow checking them being unmodified and originally from Apache. The binary release will contain external components which may be classified as Apache category B and thus cannot be part of the source release. This is done for the end user's convenience so that not everyone who downloads AOO3.4 has to install components he is interested in by himself. Extra stuff added this way contains e.g. Hyphenation and Spelling data, language sets, but also external libraries which extend the functionality of AOO3.4.
Q: How is the source release created?
A: The source release packages are created by an ant script (main/solven/bin/srcrelease.xml) which is triggered as special make target (dmake aoo_srcrelease) in the module/directory main/instsetoo_native/util where the binary packages (full install sets, language packs) are built as well. The script packs all relevant content from trunk excepting some stuff that is in trunk for convenience only like ext_sources. The script can be run at every time and will exclude all generated files and pack the files from the repository only. The NOTICE, LICENSE and README file from main are copied in the root directory of the source release package. The structure for AOO 3.4 looks like:
aoo-3.4 aoo-3.4/NOTICE aoo-3.4/LICENSE aoo-3.4/README aoo-3.4/main/... aoo-3.4/extras/... aoo-3.4/ext_libraries/...
Q: What is trunk/ext_libraries?
A: When looking at the project's trunk you can see a sub directory called ext_libraries. It is part of the source release. The projects there contain mechanisms to download, patch and build modules needed for a configured build (see Building Guide), but not the external code. The modules could also be part of the trunk/main directory, but are a starting point for successively moving external content out of the trunk/main to get a cleaner source structure in the future. New added libraries which need external content should be added here.
Q: What is trunk/ext_sources?
A: When looking at the project's trunk you can see a sub directory called ext_sources. This contains additions to the regular AOO3.4 which are not in the Apache source release, but extend the functionality of the binary AOO3.4 releases. This is done to not force each AOO3.4 user to install these contained additional functionality himself. ext_source is not part of the source release. For being able to build various configured versions of AOO3.4 (using configure flags, see Building Guide) the build environment has mechanisms to dynamically download the contents needed from sources of the net.
Q: Where are the LICENSE and NOTICE files?
A: See above for the source release. LICENSE and NOTICE files are also part of the binary packages and will be installed in directory locations depending on the platform.
Q: What information is contained in the LICENSE file?
A: The LICENSE file for the source package will contain all license text of the files found in the source package. The LICENSE file for the binary packages will additionally contain the license text of the additionally packed components.
Q: What information is contained in the NOTICE file?
A: The NOTICE file for the source package will contain the corresponding needed notices of the files found in the source package. The NOTICE file for the binary packages will not contain any additional notices as the additional licenses are not requesting any.
Q: What are category-b components and how are these handled for building AOO3.4?
A: Category-B components have reciprocal licenses so additional care must be taken in order to minimize the risk for a redistributor of AOO to create a derivative work of such a component without being aware of the applicable requirements. These components are disabled by default and unless they explicitly enabled by using the configure switch --enable-category-b they will be not be used.