Sticking Your Head in the Lion's Mouth
Apple's new version of its operating system, OS X Lion, is due to be released to the public in the next couple of weeks. The new user interface features are very nice. Upgrading promises to be simple and inexpensive.
This is good for consumers but trouble for xTuple users. You see, current releases of OpenRPT and of PostBooks and other editions of xTuple ERP do not work well on Lion.
Thanks to one of our community members, we learned several weeks ago that previewing and printing reports with xTuple ERP 3.7.1 crashes the application on OS X Lion. Since then we've seen some other problems, too. Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do about this yet - the version of the toolkit we use to create our applications doesn't work well on the new Mac OS.
We do not yet have a release date for xTuple applications that will run on the new Mac operating system. We will let you know as soon as we do. In the meanwhile, please try to hold back from upgrading your Macs to the new version of the operating system.
The technicalities:
We currently build xTuple ERP and related software with a cross-platform development framework called Qt. Qt version 4.8 specifically adds support for OS X Lion (10.7) but has not been released yet. There are known incompatibilities between Qt 4.7 and Lion. The OpenRPT crash on Lion is fixed when we build with the Qt 4.8 technology preview. At this time (mid-July, 2011), all we can do is wait for Qt to catch up with Apple and release Qt 4.8.
Once Qt 4.8 is released, we'll be able to build and test the xTuple apps in a fully supported environment.
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Hi, I'm new to Xtuple and quite impressed with the product after only 3 hours of use; considering to adopt it for some clients.. can anyone tell me how to:
1. customise the desktop
2. modify the menu; re-arrange and introduce my own menu items
3. run in a browser
Well, you can't do #3. The GUI client is a compiled executable, which runs natively on every platform.
As for #1 and #2, those are fairly advanced topics. There's a fair amount of documentation you can dig through - start with http://www.xtuple.org/developer-zone.
You might also consider our upcoming training classes in Washington DC. The first week, Implementing and Managing xTuple, is a prerequisite to the second week (really four days), Power User Training. We only offer the two classes back-to-back like this once a year, so it's really a great opportunity. And while we usually offer the class at our corporate HQ in Norfolk, Virginia, we've intentionally scheduled this one for DC to make it easier for international travelers to join us for the two weeks.
Cheers,
Ned
QT 4.8 Beta is available. Have you tested it yet?
Jimmy,
We have done some preliminary testing with Qt 4.8 Tech Preview (before the beta) and OS X Lion and have not seen any problems yet. We still need to test whether we can build and distribute one version of the application that will run on Lion, Snow Leopard, and Leopard (and possibly Tiger, as well).
Gil
First off - thank you for supporting the Mac platform! (Even if this is a by-product of using the Qt environment, it's still very much appreciated!).
I just came across your blog entry, and with Qt 4.8 still unreleased, was just wondering how things were shaping up on the OS X Lion side of things. I'm currently running 3.7.3 on Snow Leopard and Ubuntu environments, but have one machine I've built up running Lion. I've played around some with a test database, but haven't used it against the live database yet.
Anything new to report on OS X Lion yet?
No news yet - we're still waiting on the Qt release cycle, as you indicated. Will let everyone know here as soon as we have something.
Just an update on this: At the time of our initial testing we were working with a preview of Lion where we encountered problems. It looks like it may be the case that the problems we were having were more Apple side problems than Qt problems. I say this because I am running xTuple 3.7 and 3.8 beta on a new Lion laptop we just got, and it seems to work fine. We will be running the client through our battery of tests in the next week or so to verify and certify that xTuple works on the currently released version of Lion, but as of this moment things are looking good.
Any news on this in the last three months? I need to know if xTuple 3.7.2 will work with Lion. As you probably know Apple no longer sells mac minis compatible with anything BUT Lion. So I find myself in a situation where I need to purchase old macs on Ebay. I'd rather not do that so can you confirm (hopefully) if xTuple 3.7.2 (or any available version) is stable on Lion?
Yes, see http://www.xtuple.org/node/4524
