Contribute to the OCA's Odoo instance (kick-starter guide)

This one-pager guide aims to help happy volunteers to contribute to the OCA's Odoo instance, supposedly the OCA's Internal Tools team.

Table of content

1. Introduction: who we are, how we work
2. Getting Started
   • Concepts: main concepts to understand and general organization
   • Processes: helping doing the work without missing crucial steps
   • How-Tos: how to do specific tasks
3. FAQ

Introduction

This repository is managed by OCA's Internal Tools team:

• email: internaltools@odoo-community.org
• Github team page
• Github project Kanban

Please refer to the document Scope & Objective to understand the governance and missions of the Internal Tools team within the OCA. Under the watch of OCA board, this document mainly explains:

• The "Raison d'être" of the Internal Tools group
• Tasks and responsabilities
• Autonomy scope
• How to become part of the group
• Internal governances (leaders & members)
• Useful processes to start working in the group

Getting Started

This section will guide you to:

1. Build a test environment on a developer's machine, replicating OCA's Odoo production instance
2. Push a change in production to OCA's Odoo production instance

Concepts

This repository is setup as other OCA's repositories to launch CI as usual and as an extra configuration in order to build the OCA' Docker image used by our Odoo instance, as well as facilitate the bootstrapping of a development environment.

Managing and freezing modules versions rely on python tools:

• uv
• hatch-odoo

Processes

Here we focus on what to do without explaining how to do it.

Release

While we are building and publishing a docker image the current state is that the image is build at deploy time on OCA server.

While technically speaking there is nothing more than accessing to a public commit to deploy a new version it's a common practice to merge your work on branch 14.0 before deploying a new version in production.

Note: in this repository we allow unreleased dependencies.

Deployment

Ask administrator to deploy the given commit.

How-Tos

Here we focus on how to do it, it's a suggest way to works but feel free to use your own way.

Setup developer environment

Requirements:

• uv: several methods exist to install it, one can be curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh. It will install other prerequisites.
• Postgresql
• Some dependencies to be able to build some python packages: libpq-dev, build-essential, ...
• wkhtmltopdf

Run the following commands to prepare a python virtual environment with the correct python version (which uv will download for you if necessary) and install the required dependencies:

git clone git@github.com:OCA/oca-custom -branch 14.0
cd oca-custom
uv sync

Setup database

Setup database with demo data and all OCA modules installed:

uv run odoo -d oca-custom -i oca_all --stop-after-init --without-demo=

The oca_all module contains the __manifest__.py with all Odoo modules dependencies for the OCA Odoo instance.

Neutralize database

If you are allow to access to a production database, neutralization happens while stating the Docker container if the running environnement is not the production server.

On development, if your are not using docker you can running neutralize scripts such as:

 find entrypoints/neutralize/*.sql -type f -exec  psql <dbname> -f {} \;

Development

For addons living in this repository, you can just change code and restart Odoo with the uv run command.

For addons in other repositories, the procedure is as follows:

• check out the repository somewhere, ie /src/$repo

• add the following line to pyproject.toml in the [tool.uv.sources] section:

  odoo14-addon-$youraddon = { path = "/srv/$repo/setup/$youraddon", editable = true }
  

• run uv sync

• restart Odoo

Use unreleased dependency

There is two different goals:

• making the test CI pass: using regular test-requirements.txt files add a line such as

  odoo14-addon-membership-delegated-partner-line @ git+https://github.com/OCA/vertical-association@refs/pull/151/head#subdirectory=setup/membership_delegated_partner_line
  

• bring the unreleased dependency in the uv project (and the built docker image), add the following line to pyproject.toml in the [tool.uv.sources] section:

  odoo14-addon-membership-delegated-partner-line = { git = "https://github.com/OCA/vertical-association", rev = "refs/pull/151/head", subdirectory = "setup/membership_delegated_partner_line" }
  

Launch tests

Run tests using pytest launcher.

uv run pytest --odoo-database oca-custom --cov ./oca_psc_team/ oca_psc_team/

Update OCB Branch

uv sync -P odoo

Update a specific OCA module dependency using the latest pypi release

uv sync -P odoo14-addon-<module-name>

Note bug astral-sh/uv#14684, that says if multiple packages are sourced from the same branch/PR, we need to specify both of them as to upgrade, otherwise they don't get rescanned.

#### Bump all dependencies to the latest version

uv sync -U

FAQ

How can I start contributing in OCA toolings?

• Get to know the manifest document of OCA's Internal Tools team: Scope & Objective.
• Write to us at internaltools@odoo-community.org.
• Install a test environment on your machine of the OCA's Odoo instance by following the § Getting Started.

How to communicate with the OCA Internal Tools?

Our main communication channel is the mailing list internaltools@odoo-community.org. For task-related discussion, also directly use the Chatter of the Odoo tasks.

Where is the tasks backlog of the OCA Internal Tools?

We use the Odoo project OCA internal tools workgroup on the OCA's Odoo instance to organize our tasks and priorities. A public access to the project can be provided to OCA members who contributes to the tooling tasks (not requesting privacy form signing).

How to access the backend of OCA's Odoo instance?

It can be useful to access Odoo back-end for both task management and browse instance's modules and data. For such, prerquisites are:

• being a member of the OCA and the OCA Internal Tools group
• be registered on OCA's Odoo instance
• fullfil and send back the Data protection & privacy form, available on OCA website Resources / How to guides / Protect data & privacy when you support OCA projects

What are useful Github repositories?

• The current oca-custom is the main repository. It contains both all Odoo modules dependencies of OCA instance in oca_all/__manifest__.py and all configuration to build an Odoo test instance the uv, as described in Getting Started.
• apps-store holds mechanisms of OCA modules replication to official Odoo's App Store

How to get representive data, for troubleshooting and test?

Contact the mailing list to get a neutralized and anonymized database.

How to gain command line access and read logs?

Only a few people have admin server access, please reach the mailing list for further details.

How to refresh test instance from production instances (on the server)?

home/odoo/instance/README gives some guidance.