openerp.buildout

This is a buildout-based project to generate OpenERP 6.1 instances for tests and development, on a Debian 6.0 Squeeze.

I'm not sure it's ready for production, but feel free to send patches to help me improve this situation.

All the commands below should be performed with your normal user. Each time we need extra privileges we prefix our commands with sudo.

I aim to make this script less messy and sysadmin-friendly but this goal often conflicts with making a fully-automated script. However I think these two goals can be reached by making openerp.buildout a little bit more modular. But I'm not sure how, so I need ideas and contributions from people using it in real life.

Install OpenERP on a local machine

1. Install required dependencies:

    $ sudo apt-get update
    $ sudo apt-get install sudo python-dev gcc bzr subversion git postgresql-9.1 python-ldap python-libxslt1 libxslt1-dev libyaml-dev libjpeg62-dev zlib1g-dev libfreetype6-dev liblcms1-dev libxml2-dev libpq-dev
   

2. Get a copy of this buildout template:

    $ git clone git://github.com/kdeldycke/openerp.buildout.git
    $ cd ./openerp.buildout
   

3. Initialize the buildout environment:

    $ python ./bootstrap.py --distribute
   

4. Run buildout itself:

    $ sudo ./bin/buildout
   

5. Start the PostgreSQL server:

    $ sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
   

6. Now you can launch the OpenERP server and web client:

    $ sudo /etc/init.d/openerp-server restart
    $ sudo /etc/init.d/openerp-web-client restart
   

7. To play with your OpenERP instance, all you have to do is to point your browser to:

    http://127.0.0.1:8080
   

8. And to monitor everything's all right, keep an eye on the logs:

    $ tail -F /var/log/openerp/openerp-*.log
   

9. Finally to let the server and the web client starts with the machine, do:

    $ sudo update-rc.d openerp-server defaults 90
    $ sudo update-rc.d openerp-web-client defaults 91
   

Command helpers

Or how to make your daily usage of buildout painless.

bin/buildout

This is the command to run to build a new environement.

This is also the command you call to update your environment.

In fact you can safely call it whenever you want. buildout implement an internal mecanism that keeps tracks of what it installed and configured before, that's why it's safe. And that's also why you can re-call it if it crashed in the middle of its execution.

bin/openerp-server.sh & bin/openerp-web-client.sh

There are script helper available in ./bin to let you launch OpenERP's server (./bin/openerp-server.sh) and web client (./bin/openerp-web-client.sh) easily with the right user and configuration.

For example, if you need to update all modules of a database, you can use the following command:

    $ ./bin/openerp-server.sh -d my_database_id -u all

bin/openerp-shell

All those scripts are based on ./bin/openerp-shell which is a simple wrapper around your system's Python interpreter, only it add under its scope all modules locally installed by this buildout. So if you're looking to use whatever Python module buildout install for you, forget about your system's Python interpreter and use ./bin/openerp-shell instead, see:

    $ python
    Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Dec 26 2010, 22:31:48)
    [GCC 4.4.5] on linux2
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> import mako
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
    ImportError: No module named mako
    >>>

    $ ./bin/openerp-shell
    >>> import mako
    >>> repr(mako)
    "<module 'mako' from '/home/openerp.buildout/eggs/Mako-0.4.2-py2.6.egg/mako/__init__.pyc'>"
    >>>

Configuration extensions

Aeroo

Aeroo is a reporting engine for OpenERP.

To let this buildout install and configure it, you first have to install OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) and some other dependencies:

    $ sudo apt-get install openoffice.org python-openoffice python-cairo-dev

Then add profiles/aeroo.cfg to the extend parameter of the [buildout] section of buildout.cfg.

Finally, you have to start the office server in a headless mode:

    $ sudo /etc/init.d/office-server restart

And to let the office starts with the machine, do:

    $ sudo update-rc.d office-server defaults 90

Apache

If you want to serve OpenERP web client through Apache, a configuration file can be automaticcaly generated.

First install Apache itself:

    $ sudo apt-get install apache2

Then add profiles/apache.cfg to the extend parameter of the [buildout] section of buildout.cfg, and set the web-domain variable to your public domain name.

Troubleshooting

Locale

You may encounter this issue when Bazaar commands are run:

    bzr: warning: unsupported locale setting
      bzr could not set the application locale.
      Although this should be no problem for bzr itself,
      it might cause problems with some plugins.
      To investigate the issue, look at the output
      of the locale(1p) tool available on POSIX systems.

This can be fixed by forcing your locale to more sane defaults.

Here is how I did it on Debian Squeeze (source):

    $ echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" >> /etc/default/locale
    $ echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen
    $ locale-gen

Then I had to log out and back in to have the environment variables set to the new defaults.

And here is another way of fixing this local issue (thanks Xavier for the tip !):

    $ apt-get install --reinstall language-pack-fr
    $ dpkg-reconfigure locales

Proxy

Behind a proxy ? Just set the appropriate environment variables to let Subversion and Bazaar pass through it:

    $ export  http_proxy=http://10.0.2.1:8080
    $ export https_proxy=http://10.0.2.1:8080

Note that some versions of Bazaar are affected by a bug which doesn't let you pass a proxy. In my case, the bzr-2.1.2-1 package available on my Debian Squeeze was affected by such a bug. To fix this, I just applied the patch proposed at http://code.edge.launchpad.net/~lifeless/bzr/bug-558343-wrong-host-with-proxy/+merge/24938 .

Install OpenERP in the cloud (work in progress)

1. Get a copy of this buildout template:

    $ sudo apt-get install git
    $ git clone git://github.com/kdeldycke/openerp.buildout.git
    $ cd ./openerp.buildout
   

2. Initialize the buildout environment:

    $ python ./bootstrap.py --distribute
   

3. Edit the buildout.cfg file and uncomment the line refering to profiles/cloud.cfg. Update the [amazon-instance] section with your Amazon AWS key and secret.

4. Run buildout itself:

    $ ./bin/buildout -N
   

5. Then we have to create an instance in the cloud:

    $ ./bin/hostout amazon-instance create
   

6. Then we have to initialize the remote server:

    $ ./bin/hostout amazon-instance bootstrap
   

7. Deploy to EC2:

    $ ./bin/hostout amazon-instance deploy
   

8. To test, we can run our remote OpenERP shell:

    $ bin/hostout amazon-instance run bin/openerp-shell
   

9. And finally, once you don't need your cloud instance, you can destroy it:

    $ ./bin/hostout amazon-instance destroy
   

To fine-tune your cloud and choose the right instance, you can run these commands:

    $ ./bin/hostout amazon-instance list_providers
    $ ./bin/hostout amazon-instance list_nodes
    $ ./bin/hostout amazon-instance list_sizes
    $ ./bin/hostout amazon-instance list_images

TODO

• Separate server and web profile.
• Group all system initialization commands in one separate buildout config file. Basically eveything that has to be run as root will be moved there. The new buildout.cfg will then be able to be run without root privileges.
• Auto-update all modules of all databases on update.
• Consider using and contributing to http://pypi.python.org/pypi/anybox.recipe.openerp
• Get inspiration from http://github.com/kalymero/OpenERP-Buildout ?
• Automate locale fix ?
• Use mr.developer to download OpenERP components from bazaar ? It looks like mr.developer is smarter and can speed up the download process...
• Or look at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/checkoutmanager
• Explore the use of OpenERP 6.1 web client as a module (see: http://twitter.com/#!/fpopenerp/status/118572842559340544 )
• Worth looking at isotoma.recipe.facts for extra info and automation: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/isotoma.recipe.facts
• Add a way to generate a big archive of all components used in that OpenERP build. This may be useful for customer's project delivery.
• It maybe worth checking this: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/cloudinitd
• Use pip install --user as explained at http://opensourcehacker.com/2012/09/16/recommended-way-for-sudo-free-installation-of-python-software-with-virtualenv/comment-page-1/#comment-7325 ?
• Use http://pypi.python.org/pypi/mr.scripty to generate fully-generic configuration.

Author & Contributors

• Kevin Deldycke
• Xavier Fernandez

License

This code is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

For full details, please see the file named COPYING in the top directory of the source tree. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Embedded external projects

This tool uses external softwares, scripts, libraries and artworks:

    Buildout's bootstrap.py
    Copyright (c) 2006, Zope Corporation and Contributors
    Distributed under the Zope Public License, version 2.1 (ZPL).
    Source: http://svn.zope.org/repos/main/zc.buildout/trunk/bootstrap/bootstrap.py