1. OpenOffice.org - migration & development
Michael Meeks
“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls...” - Jeremiah 6:16

2. Overview Development code structure & sample hack more performance
scripting / pyUno
cool things to hack on ?
Migration
management / lock-down
VBA to StarBasic ? (or not)
Conclusions / Questions

3. Big Eng. meets Free Software
Traditional
OpenOffice.org
Form iTeam
Write
Specification
Code to
Specification
QA cycle
Commit
Customer
complaints
9-18 month
delay
Get itch
Fix irritation
Commit / test
commit / release
Traditional
Free Software
Customer screaming
commences
Child Workspace
all work done on branches, tested, then merged
HEAD permanently releasable, pain for small fixes.
Irony – small 'entry-level' things: disproportionately painful
Various compromises possible

4. ooo-build - http://go-oo.org/
Leaner / simpler building
Works well on Novell / Debian / Mdv / ...
less joy on Fedora.
Wraps the existing OO.o build system
configure
./download
make
make install
Ultimately aim to get everything going up-stream
Somewhat different philosophy:
patch sub-setting / non-Win32 features / distro specifics etc.
Prerequisites:
~2.5Gb+ disk
~512Mb RAM
~Ghz processor

5. Hacking ... Demo: my first hack ... Install / link / etc.
How to grapple with the beast, and find what you're looking for
Demo: my first hack ...
Install / link / etc.
poke at
Fix the things Sun does not: ergonomics ?
The customer is [almost] always right
eg. CSV file field separators
eg. Style apply ergonomics
eg. Icons / artwork / GUI re-works
Research tasks
information can be more easily absorbed than patches
infrastructure / community / expectation setting

6. More Performance ?

7. Linking – a graphical view ...
Lookup 'rtl_ustr_compare':
soffice.bin
libc
ld-linux
sal
ucb
svx sw
...omit
dynstr + .dynsym + .rel* + .plt + .hash = 22MB (OO.o 1.1)
Symbol hash
Why ? - Vague linkage
inline functions
templates
type_info
exceptions
dynamic_cast
typeid
Why ? - interposing
fprintf
write
stderr
1.2 compares avg. per library

8. Immediate linking ... relocations
need to be done before dlopen completes
_ZTV8Foo:
.long Base::getCount
.long Parent::setCount
...
.long Foo::addKipper
.long Foo::removeKipper
All symbol driven[!]
Vague linkage ...
50/50 external/internal

9. Simple / Obvious generic link fixes:
Code to go up-stream
pre-computed hashvals
-Bdirect linking
-zdynsort
Known issues yet to be fixed:
external symbols in hash table / chain
kills gratuitous cache trashing
sort relocations by -Bdirect
yet futher cache pattern improvement
make cache bucket size range 2^n
remove randomizing effect of (hash % prime[n]) access
merge .direct, .hashvals & add shrunk chain info
further consolidation of access patterns
“no hash value conflicts” flag: remove -Bdirect strcmp's.

10. Other performance bits:
Vague linkage cripples us
all shlib components loaded RTLD_GLOBAL
compile & link: 1 monster 'libexcept.so' => RTLD_LOCAL
40% linking speedup (~700ms)
Other things
Code size redux:
Splitting out dialogs:
aggregation not inheritance.
Sharing exception data
COMDAT (?)
Better linking:
vtable copy logic, & via-vtable / parent chaining.
64bit support
don't load lots of 32bit libraries to launch OO.o ...

11. Comic relief after hard-core linking discussion ...

12. Other areas ... psprint statting every font on startup [fixed]
to write a timestamp to a cache file that was subsequently never used [ fixed in recent builds ]
ideally should re-use fontconfig font data
new UI design very file heavy [needs re-work]
300 scattered XML files to describe the OO.o UI
New #1 Offender: the Registry / Configuration:
Registry – cached ... in scattered files
Avoids re-parsing – but each piece in a different file
Can parse 100,000+ lines of XML during 1 seek – duh.
Images – cached ... in scattered files
Split out of 1 big file – into ~8 scattered files
4.5Mb of .zip -> 1Mb of uncompressed / scattered 'cache'

13. Bloatedness ... memory chewage
MySpell checking – a huge beast [recently un-fixed]
by mmapping the dictionary & using a simpler hash
3.5Mb -> 1Mb of (non-shared) memory usage at least 1Mb saved for single-user case.
fix in ooo-build, not up-stream yet
exploding types.rdb – mmapped but ...
went from 3.5Mb in 1.1.x to 6.1Mb in 2.0 – why ? [GHEX ...]
images.zip – much better vs. 1.1.x resources
unfortunately doubles size of .zip with (~never used a11y) icons (wasting 500Kb core to store .zip directory). [.zip stamp]
fix implementing icon theming (in ooo-build, festering in cws)

14. PyUno & scripting:

15. Easy to add packages ...
C++ a bit of a nightmare: Java / Python better ...
Tools->Package Manager
Simple .zip file:
Addons.xcu
<oor:component-data oor:name="Addons" ...>
<node oor:name="AddonUI">
<node oor:name="OfficeMenuBar">
<node oor:name="org.openoffice.Office.Addons" oor:op="replace">
<prop oor:name="Title" oor:type="xs:string">
<value xml:lang="en">~Blog</value>
</prop>
...
<node oor:name="Submenu">
<node oor:name="AppleBloggerSave" oor:op="replace">
<prop oor:name="URL" oor:type="xs:string">
<value>vnd.sun.star.job:service=org.openoffice.pyuno.Blog.Save</value>
</prop>...
</oor:component-data>

16. Easy to add packages (2) ... Simple .zip file: Addons.xcu
And - foo_python_script.py:
g_ImplementationHelper = unohelper.ImplementationHelper()
class BloggerSave( unohelper.Base, XJob ):
def __init__( self, ctx ):
self.ctx = ctx
def execute(self, args):
SavePost()
return 1
...
g_ImplementationHelper.addImplementation( \
BloggerSave,"org.openoffice.pyuno.Blog.Save",
("com.sun.star.task.Job",),)

17. Cool things to hack on

18. Access / Layout ... MS Access import
Evil file format done:
Not so robust
need an 'Importer' not a D/B backend.
import templates / forms / macros etc.
Layout: visual / translation improvements:
2 prototypes exist already
some simple hacking required.

19. Scribble/GStreamer/Wiki/...
Wiki integration
richer document editing / collation of pages
Evolution composer
revolutionize with the OpenDocument format ?
GStreamer integration
slay the non-Free Java Media Framework
Scribble overlay:
Tablet PC + document: draw / annotate on top of it.
Content mgmt. systems ...
ODMA / [ common Unix space API ? ]
SVG import & render ...

20. Migration: VBA & lock-down

21. Lock-down ... Highly powerful system
LDAP backends, multiple layers etc.
everything tweakable – font mapping, colors etc. etc.
In reality:
tiny sub-set really useful: default file format, etc.
ooo-build: gconf keys for some of these
'just another layer'
Sabayon integration (?)
Templates / dictionaries
user-dict re-write [urgh]
'ootool' ...

22. StarBasic vs. VBA ... Guess which – an interactive macro game:
[ All examples from VbaStarBasicXref.sxi ]
1. wksh = ThisComponent.CurrentController.ActiveSheet
vs.
wksh = ActiveWorksheet
2. msgbox WorksheetFunctions.Average(Range("A1:A5"))
Dim oSheet, FuncService
FuncService = createunoservice("com.sun.star.sheet.FunctionAccess")
oSheet = ThisComponent.CurrentController.ActiveSheet
msgbox FuncService.callFunction(“AVERAGE”, _
array(oSheet.getCellRangeByName("A1:A5")))
Lots more examples ...
OTOH – no 'Replace' problem

23. Conclusion OO.o – an amazing base to build from
lots of things need doing
great re-use / amazing development possible
plenty of sillies left to fix ...
re-use OO.o in your project ...
Lots of cool projects to get involved in ...
Links:
Google: VbaStarBasic.sxw ...
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