I don’t want to complain … well, actually, I do want to complain, but I don’t want to whine about it. The docs …
I am completely lost in the docs. If my car owner’s manual was written like the Tryton docs I have seen, I would be hearing about cylinder compression, torque ratings, and rear-end ratios, but explanations of how to turn it on and drive it would be missing. Steering wheel? Pedals? Knobs and switches? Let me tell you about the machining tolerances …
So, I have successfully navigated the pitfalls and complexity of the “plumbing” with substantial help, meaning I have all the pieces working together, but I don’t know how to actually do anything that Tryton was created to do. I’m guessing and bothering a whole lot of people, and I am making slow and painful progress.
Maybe there is a secret set of docs that are more illuminating? Maybe a document that explains how the documentation works? (-:
I assume you have an initialized database and can connect.
How far have you got in configuring Tryton?
Have you followed the initial database configuration steps, and those for the 1st connection?
Have you installed the modules you need, the main ones at least?
The official documentation at docs.tryton.org, while technically accurate, is too technical for people not familiar with tryton.
There is Howto - Tryton Discussion where anyone may write a Howto, but very few do, and usually the documentation is rejected as not being the right quality.
You may find out how a module is supposed to be used by checking the tests directory inside the module directory. By looking at how the tests scenarios are written one can usually understand how the module is intended to be used.
But this is technical too, so I guess Tryton is a technical product.
There are some efforts:
What do you think should be improved using the existing documentation infrastructure?
For what I have seen, you were struggling with the manual installation (the more complicate way).
The problem is that such installation is different for each OS (and even version). There are also plenty ways of installing Python packages (venv, pipx, etc.).
Indeed we have a simple way to setup Tryton with single command line by using the compose file described on the docker image. This is the first advised way described on Tryton - Get Tryton.
But I agree that the topic index should be restructured to be split into sub-topic to group administration and development topics.
Yes. It is the story of my life. If there is a hard way to do something, it is the way I will find. (-: I did not choose the docker image because my intent was to have a development installation. I am not at all new to software development, but I am new to Python. I have assiduously avoided Python because I find semantic white space to be offensive to my core, but I can no longer ingore that I am clearly in the minority and Python has grown to be a force.
My story is very simple. Trytond did not have a connection to PostgreSQL and that was not clear until much later when I had discovered the clues that were not initially obvious and meaningful. PostgreSQL allows two ways to connect – “peer” and “password”. I eventually got “peer” working when I realized that I had to run trytond AS THE OS user that PostgreSQL recognized – “tryton”, in my case. I still don’t have “password” working, but that is my goal for today. Given the hard lessons I have learned, it should be easy. (-: Stay tuned …
Now that I think about it – If I were going to make the simplest change that would have greatly clarified my confusion, I would change the client message from “Could not connect to server” to “Could not connect to Database server. For ‘peer’ authorization, Tyrtond must run as a recognized OS user”.
Thanks for the help,
Chris.
P.S.: In case there was any doubt, of course PostgreSQL password authentication works.
A bit off topic: For me Tryton is a place where all my information has a place.
Before Tryton I used to have Invoicing in one program, pro forma and unconfirmed orders in excel, production on paper sheets (the production orders were even worse, they were verbal), customer information in sugarcrm.
I started by developing some custom modules to make everything work because I did not understand how much more efficiently I could work by following standard modules. Now I have abandoned most custom modules and use almost only standard modules. I am about three years in and I still have a lot to learn.
Users who do not understand normalized relational data will most likely complain that Tryton is weird and confusing, but with some training they can usually learn to use a module or two. Tryton is lean, not bloated.
As Tryton is both a framework and an ERP, if you embrace the design of Tryton it is trivial to create a new custom module or to extend the functionality of existing modules.
The disadvantage is that you will not find very many end-to-end ready to use solutions, and some other software can have nicer looks, more graphs and features that only look good, and if this is what you want Tryton might not be for you. Also if you fight the design of Tryton you may have a hard time.
Feel free to ask on the forum what you want to do.
Where do I go for “operational questions”? It is not “System Administration”, if I am asking how I account for something or if a particular circumstance can be recorded and how to do it.
So, for example, suppose I have a fleet of trucks and I want to keep track of oil changes and be reminded when one is due. I want the odometer reading recorded every time an employee takes one. I also want other details of the usage recorded. How would each truck be recorded and how would the operational schedule be recorded? I also have an inventory of, say, tires in support of the trucks.
I think the larger questions is, “Where do I seek advice about using the application, rather than making it available to be used?” – given that I now understand the “make available for use” problem quite well.
Since this is not a standard module, you could look at the repositories of community members, quite a few service providers have repositories with quite a lot of modules, however there is not one central place where they can be found.
Also search pypi.org, and select Browse projects, and filter by Framework: Tryton to find tryton modules.
And if you can not find something that suits you, then I guess the issue is development, for which there is a Category. Under Support category there is User, Developer, and System Administration.
I do not understand exactly what you mean.
Making available to be used meaning contributing to the Tryton project?
For this there is the Features category, in which features are discussed for inclusion in the Tryton project.
Might be a good idea to get some experience with Tryton before proposing a feature.
To deploy, use and maintain an ERP in a reasonable way, you need too many skills:
system administration, data protection, cybersecurity, database performance, version upgrades, tests and system recovery,
ERP functionality, business process management, migrations and integration, new versions follow-up,
development to adapt, diagnose, repair …
And probably more, as a starter.
Whatever the documentation, it cannot cover all these topics correctly in particular because it cannot anticipate the way users will decide to articulate all these topics.
For me, it is unrealistic to say to new comers : hey, here is the code and a 1k page doc, just run your own business with that and don’t lose your data.
I propose a title for this 1k page doc : How to spend time and fail on Tryton.
There are difficulties that documentation will never fix.
We need a balance between documentation and affordable professional services availability.
There is, somehow. @herrdeh (assisted by some others, see credits) wrote an excellent “Tryton Buch” from a non-developer’s and non-sysadmins’s perspective. Even if its written in German: give it a try. (And any feedback and help for translating it is appreciated at Tryton Community — Documentation.)
I don’t think there is such. Just translate, improve and enhance and publish at a place of your choice. Souce md files can be found HERE. If you want to do me (and us) a favour, write tickets for unclear, not precise or wrong passages. Or for missing bits. Certainly, there’s a lot.
As @herrdeh mentioned, there is none. My vision is to create a multi-lingual sphinx-based documentation with country specific sections. Anyhow, more important is to have a translation at all.
For a single multi-lingual content follow-up, Omega-T can be of some help.
At next version, it will highlight the changes and may propose a consistent translation.
This requires to isolate any localized content.
