In Chapter 1, Installing the Odoo Development Environment, we looked at how to set up an Odoo instance using only the standard core add-ons that are shipped with the editor. This chapter focuses on adding non-core add-ons to an Odoo instance. In Odoo, you can load add-on from multiple directories. In addition, it is recommended that you load your third-party add-ons (for example, OCA modules) or your own custom add-ons from separate folders to avoid conflicts with Odoo core modules. Even Odoo Enterprise Edition is a type of add-on directory, and you need to load this just like a normal add-ons directory.
About the terminology – add-on versus module
In this book, we will use the term add-on or add-on module to refer to a Python package that respects the expected format to be installed in Odoo. The user interface often uses the words app or module for this, but we prefer keeping the term module for Python modules or packages that are not necessarily Odoo add-ons, and app for add-on modules that are properly defined as applications, meaning that they have an entry in the main menu of Odoo.
In this book, we will use the term add-on or add-on module to refer to a Python package that respects the expected format to be installed in Odoo. The user interface often uses the words app or module for this, but we prefer keeping the term module for Python modules or packages that are not necessarily Odoo add-ons, and app for add-on modules that are properly defined as applications, meaning that they have an entry in the main menu of Odoo.