How do I determine the version of OpenOffice from the command line in Ubuntu and OS X

Question

How can I determine which version of open office is installed? I'd like to be able to issue this command on an Ubuntu machine as well as a Mac OS X machine.

Solution

Look at the contents of the file versionrc. It's installed next to the binaries and its content is the following (on OS X):

$ cat versionrc 
[Version]
AllLanguages=en-US
buildid=330m20(Build:9567)
ExtensionUpdateURL=http://updateexte.services.openoffice.org/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update
OOOBaseVersion=3.3
ProductBuildid=9567
ProductMajor=330
ProductMinor=20
ProductSource=OOO330
UpdateID=OpenOffice.org_3_en-US
UpdateURL=http://update36.services.openoffice.org/ProductUpdateService/check.Update?pkgfmt=dmg
UpdateUserAgent=<PRODUCT> (${buildid}; ${_OS}; ${_ARCH}; BundledLanguages=${AllLanguages})

On OS X, it's in /Applications/OpenOffice.org.app/Contents/MacOS/versionrc (depending on your installation path, of course).

In the RedHat 32 bit download, it's provided by openoffice.org3-3.3.0-9567.i586.rpm and is in /opt/openoffice.org3/program/versionrc.

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Alternatively, run soffice -h (in the same directory as versionrc, if it's not on your path as e.g. on OS X):

$ ./soffice -h 2>&1 | head -n1
OpenOffice.org 3.3  330m20(Build:9567)

^{Filtered to remove help on soffice's command line arguments.}

Comments

[Paul]

possible half dupe: superuser.com/questions/222017/…

[slhck]

On OS X, you could also read the CFBundleGetInfoString from Info.plist.