When launching libreoffice (or previous versions of openoffice.org) in --headless mode, it was nicely executing macros assuming that I really wanted to run them. 3.4RC1 hangs, instead, since it does not succeed in asking the user whether it should or should not enable macros and it cannot assume that --headless should mean "yes" in this case. Openoffice.org and libreoffice <= 3.3.2 were both making the right assumption, for the case where macro security was "medium" IMHO who runs libreoffice in headless mode should know enough about macros security so the assumption that --headless also means "yes, enable macros" should be a safe one. Alternatively, please provide an --enable-macros on the command line to override the options setup. Current behavior is IMHO very bad, since it compels users to give up macro security altogether, just to make libreoffice happy with headless mode. Note that this is a regression wrt libreoffice 3.3.2 since scripts that have been running fine using soffice -headless for many years are now suddenly dead. Would be great fixing before 3.4 final is out.
We have found a way to work around this problem. Rather than distributing functionality via write documents we found that it is quite easy to pack macros as extensions and distribute them in that way. Once macros are installed, there is no permission problem anymore. So if it is considered proper, this bug report can be re-classified down as a wish list: As a wish I think it would be good to adopt one of the following: 1) Let --headless take the additional meaning of authorize the execution of macros in document; or 2) Add an --allow-macros override option to libreoffice
[This is an automated message.] This bug was filed before the changes to Bugzilla on 2011-10-16. Thus it started right out as NEW without ever being explicitly confirmed. The bug is changed to state NEEDINFO for this reason. To move this bug from NEEDINFO back to NEW please check if the bug still persists with the 3.5.0 beta1 or beta2 prereleases. Details on how to test the 3.5.0 beta1 can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHunting_Session_3.5.0.-1 more detail on this bulk operation: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/RFC-Operation-Spamzilla-tp3607474p3607474.html
an --allow-macros option (or equivalent) is still not present as of 3.5.0 beta 2
Dear bug submitter! Due to the fact, that there are a lot of NEEDINFO bugs with no answer within the last six months, we close all of these bugs. To keep this message short, more infos are available @ https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/NeedinfoClosure#Statement Thanks for understanding and hopefully updating your bug, so that everything is prepared for developers to fix your problem. Yours! Florian