Report builder not available on ArchLinux

Hello

This is more of an informational statement rather than a question. It is written to guide others and to also perhaps bring attention to an issue that some users are faced with.

On ArchLinux the decision makers opted to not provide a package for the ReportBuilder. A bug report for this change can be found here: FS#57765 - [libreoffice-still] Oracle Report Builder is missing

  • A claim is that no one uses it so not
    providing the package should be of no
    issue.
  • Another claim is that if you really
    need it then you should use the
    upstream binary, such as the AppImage
    provided at libreoffice.org.
  • A finall reason given was that the
    ReportBuilder had a convulted
    JavaDependency chain.

For me as a user I see a need for having the ReportBuilder. I actually need this feature. For me using the AppImage binary has been the solution, for now.

Feel free to contribute with answers and or comments.

Update
As Ratslinger, mentioned in a comment, not all distibrutions of Linux include Base and or the ReportBuilder. What distro do you use and do they include either of the two? Leave a comment and let us know.

The absence of Base and often Report Builder in most distro installations has been around for years. Claims have not changed over those years either. Because of this piece by piece install, many problems arise. Gave up on distro versions years ago.

I’ve been using report builder for many years with an older version of LibreOffice, since I was stuck with a mysql dependency.

I now made the switch to postgresql because I thought upgrading to the latest LibreOffice would be a good idea, but it took me a while before I understood that this extension was missing on archlinux only (my client is using ubuntu) and nearly switched to LO 6.3.3.

As a workaround, I was now developing parts on a virtual machine, which doesn’t work so great, and parts directly on my machine.

Great to learn I can fix this with an appimage, thanks!

I am on Manjaro and learn Base. I know that there is the option to do macros in Libre Office, but for now it is too difficult. Manjaro unfortunately provides Base without the Report Designer. So, I guess AppImage, even if I don’t like them, is it for now. I don’t know how complicated it is to provide a packet with report builder; Arch seemingly used to provide it in ealier times. I’ll see where I’ll travel with it; for now a packet with a Report Builder seems nice in my eyes; as the appimage runs besides the installed version, this might be a workaround.