After about 20 hours of compilation, my Mac Intel build of the NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha 3 source code is ready to go. I’m not really sure if I can distribute this build, as I think it may infringe on NeoOffice’s trademarks. If you want a copy, I ‘may’ be able to give you a copy if you ask nicely in the comments.

It certainly is faster than the PPC build running in Rosetta, and is faster than PPC Microsoft Office as well. Now is the time to encourage people to use NeoOffice over MS Office, while MS Office is behind with their Intel transition.

If you want to try building this yourself, you’ll need the XCode packages, which are downloadable from Apples developer site. You’ll need to register, but it’s free. I then followed the build instructions available on the NeoOffice site. It took about 20 hours to compile all the packages on my Macbook 2.0Ghz 512MB, but it will be faster if you have more RAM.

If you need to be on the cutting edge, and use Java 5 instead of Java 1.4, then follow the instructions documenting the required changes on the Apple Developer mailing lists.

You can get an Intel binary directly from NeoOffice, but only by paying into their early access program. Think of this as a donation. If you build your own copy, that probably means you use this software, so consider making a donation. If anyone knows about whether or not I can distribute this software, then please get back to me in the comments.

Note: When you build this on an Intel machine you get an Intel binary, when you build it on a PPC machine you get a PPC Binary. As far as I know there is no way to make a Universal Binary outside of XCode, or by using Intel’s own compilers.