magento-openerp-synchro module: we moved to Launchpad!

Sure Google Code Hosting is great,

But we are now seeing too much interest in that connector poping all over the world to continue the development in a centralized way. Also, we have been contacted by Jordi Esteve, the primary extern OpenERP contributor (after Launchpad stats) who wanted to jump in and join efforts, so he also asked us to move the contribution process forward.

That's why we have the pleasure to announce you that we migrated our development trunk from Google Code SVN to Bazaar on Launchpad, meaning we just use the advised OpenERP community advised distributed development platform. Also notice that we took care of migrating the previous SVN commits.

That was also the occasion to split the development in two branches:

• a 4.2 compatible maintenance Branch. That one is for the conservative folks who can't afford migrating to OpenERP v5 https://code.launchpad.net/~openerp-commiter/openobject-addons/4.2-extra-addons
  
• a 5.x branch where all the new interesting stuff is expected to happen: https://code.launchpad.net/~openerp-commiter/openobject-addons/trunk-extra-addons

In both cases, the OpenERP addon module name is now called magento_openerp_synchro.
The last SVN version (revision #27) has been ported as bzr revision #3581.1.9 on v5 branch and rev #148 in 4.2 branch. Later on both branches got a fix for issue http://code.google.com/p/magento-openerp-smile-synchro/issues/detail?id=31
v5 branch got even more attention and code clean up.

So you are very much welcome to jump in and contribute to whatever branch you need. Still, before adding any serious extra feature, we would like to insist that some refactoring should be undertaken BEFORE bloating the code.

Especially:

1. Too much code is lying inside the OpenERP wizard layers. That was a bad design choice making it hard for additionnal third party modules to extend the connector behavior and add custom features that way OpenERP allows it (thanks to its extensive OOP design). Instead, that code should be moved INSIDE THE OBJECT LAYER. That shouldn't be to hard, it's only about extracting methods, putting them in the appropriated objects (sale order, product...) and calling those methods from the wizards instead. For instance we deployed a derived version of that connector for a customer along with the sale_supplier_direct_delivery module and we had to hardcode the connector to make it account for the direct delivery eventuallity. With the new design things should work more seamlessly. See the following tracker: http://code.google.com/p/magento-openerp-smile-synchro/issues/detail?id=32
2. The sale order push feature (from Magento) has not beeing integrated properly yet and is still polluting the code. It has been a wonderfull contribution by Charles Galpin, but we had not time to integrate it the way we wanted to and it has not been tested extensively. Instead, we would like to remove the push code from Magento and instead makes Magento call OpenERP and tell him to pull the given sale order reusing it's standar sale order import code. Finally that design should be able to deal with possible network or OpenERP failure and flag failing push inside Magento for later processing. Not at top priority, but something you should be aware of. See following tracker: http://code.google.com/p/magento-openerp-smile-synchro/issues/detail?id=33
   
3. Finally, we insist that we din't take care yet of exposing ALL OpenERP XML/RPC server webservice the standard Magento way. One of the consequences is that currently importing sale orders is not secure unless you block external connections by IP at say an Apache level. A much better way would be to properly expose our custom extra webservice the Magento way, see the following tracker: http://code.google.com/p/magento-openerp-smile-synchro/issues/detail?id=6
   

Meanwhile we welcome Jordi Esteve as a core contributor + project member. We know that things have been a bit slow with Smile and the connector recently (we are flooded by OpenERP non Magento demand), but we really hope to help moving foward as much as we can. We really hope all those inputs will streamline the installation process + natively supported features while minimizing the required development skills. Enjoy!

New planet for Magento - OpenERP synchro module

Hi, I'm Raphaël Valyi, one of the main author of the synchro module between OpenERP and Magento. Some 10 months ago, after completing an extensive study about open source ERP's, I convinced Smile, my employer, to support that synchro module allowing Magento and OpenERP to work together. Some two months later, thanks to Smile and the tireless work of Sylvain Pamart, we got that connector in pretty good shape already.

Over the time, we improved it and tried to integrate community contributions as much as possible.

Since then, our OpenERP schedule at Smile got totally loaded with customer contracts letting us little time for the community even if Smile is still commited to support the effort in theory (my boss agrees on a 2 man days per month effort so far, as long as we have no higher priority, and that's the catch) . So unfortunately, it means that the connector is always lagging behind direct commercial activities.

Anyway, as I do personally see interest in pushing that connector forward, I'm taking on my spare time to give you updates about the connector in this blog, under the magento-openerp-synchro tag, so it get exported to our brand new Connector Yahoo Pipes powered planet mashup: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=7mpa3ckG3hGCuJSWPxJ3AQ

Ideally, I'll let any contributor (including Smile.fr) post in that planet when they contribute in the future. So the corporate work supported by Smile.fr will hence probably be published both here and on the corporate blog, that is http://blog.smile.fr/le-blog-des-consultants.

So I hope this planet will be a fair place to give updates about the connector while accommodating corporate, personal and community contributions. Feel also free to comment in the respective planet blogs.

Finally note that this planet is managed as a Yahoo Pipes aggregator wrapped inside a Google Gadget eventually. You can contact me to have your blog (+specific tag) included in that planet if you wish.

Raphaël Valyi