RPM and DEB packages are the recommended way for end-users who just want an ERP5 environment up and running on their server. It is also the recommended way for developers who do not need to modify ERP5 core source code. This package is not recommended for a large production environment with many users. It is not recommended for development.
Slapos (Buildout) is the recommended way to install ERP5 for developers willing to contribute to ERP5 core or who need to implement complex integration of ERP5 with other packages. It is the recommended way to setup ERP5 on a production environment.
Installation through RPM and DEB packages
This procedure is recommended for end users willing to try ERP5 or to use it for real on their own server. Through this procedure, you will learn how to install ERP5 and obtain a pre-configured ERP5 instance based on pre-defined business templates and categories. This includes a demo instance of ERP5 based on a business case as well as ERP5 extensions such as UNG web office suite.
RPM and DEB packages includes the whole software stack of ERP5 and its dependencies. You can thus install ERP5 through RPM and/or DEB packages in few minutes on about any GNU/Linux distribution without having to worry about the compatibility of the base system packages. Please follow the tutorial how to Install ERP5 throught RPM and/or DEB packages to learn how to use these packages.
Installation through SlapOS
Installing ERP5 using SlapOS (a distributed Cloud operating system based on buildout and supervisord) is the recommended way to install ERP5 for developers willing to contribute to the core of ERP5. It is also the recommended way to setup a production environment for ERP5 or to setup an environment to launch test suites in parallel. SlapOS goes beyond the concept of sofware package by including backup, monitoring and elastic scalability policies into so-called profiles and recipes. SlapOS provides a framework to launch ERP5 unit tests and functional tests over a collection of distributed inexpensive computers. By using SlapOS developers can share not only the source code of ERP5 itself but also their best practices in the field of system administration and performance optimization. SlapOS even helps running tests faster by reusing if necessary each developer laptop as a test runner.
For now, ERP5 instances created with SlapOS do not include the nice pre-defined categories and business templates which are provided with RPM and DEB packages.You will thus need to configure everything yourself. However, this will change very soon with the integration of ERP5 Configurator into ERP5 SlapOS profiles.
In order to use SlapOS with ERP5, please follow the tutorial: how to install ERP5 using SlapOS which is maintained by the community.