How to Install Odoo and Set Up a Development Environment

Install Odoo from source on Ubuntu

1. 1Install PostgreSQL and create a database role for your user: sudo apt install postgresql, then sudo -u postgres createuser -s your_user.
2. 2Install system packages for building Python dependencies, such as git, python3-dev, python3-venv, libxml2-dev, libxslt1-dev, libldap2-dev, libsasl2-dev, libpq-dev and libjpeg-dev.
3. 3Clone the Odoo repository for your version, using a shallow clone of the matching branch such as 17.0.
4. 4Create a virtual environment, activate it, and install requirements.txt from the cloned repository.
5. 5Install wkhtmltopdf if you need PDF reports with correct headers and footers.
6. 6Create an odoo.conf with addons_path, db_user and an admin password, then start the server with odoo-bin -c odoo.conf.
7. 7Open http://localhost:8069, create a database, and install a base app such as Manufacturing or Sales to confirm it works.

Source install commands

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y git python3-venv python3-dev build-essential libpq-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libldap2-dev libsasl2-dev libjpeg-dev postgresql
sudo -u postgres createuser -s $USER
git clone --depth 1 --branch 17.0 https://github.com/odoo/odoo.git
python3 -m venv odoo-venv
source odoo-venv/bin/activate
pip install wheel
pip install -r odoo/requirements.txt

[options]
admin_passwd = change_this_master_password
db_host = False
db_port = False
db_user = your_user
db_password = False
addons_path = /home/you/odoo/addons,/home/you/custom_addons

Docker for a quick trial

Common pitfalls

• !Using a Python version the Odoo version does not support.
• !Putting custom code inside the Odoo repository, which complicates upgrades.
• !Leaving the master password at its default or exposing port 8069 publicly.
• !Running as the postgres superuser or root instead of a normal role.
• !Forgetting wkhtmltopdf, then wondering why PDF reports look wrong.