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LedgerSMB 1.5.15 released
by Erik Huelsmann 07 Jan '18

07 Jan '18

The LedgerSMB development team is happy to announce yet another new version of its open source ERP and accounting application. As of this release, we're publishing a docker image based on the debian *-slim images, which reduces the Docker Hub reported size from 220MB (regular 1.5 image) to 150MB (slim image). When we don't get any negative feedback regarding the slim image, the next release will be based on that. This release contains the following fixes and improvements: Changelog for 1.5.15 * Generate access logs on standard output by default (Erik H) * Fix cli scripts; block running as root in PSGI instead of Sysconfig (Erik H) * Remove our moving out of SourceForge notice from the welcome page (Erik H) * Fix zero-value depreciations from blocking later depreciations (Chris T) * Be explicit about which Perl::Critic policies to apply in tests (Nick P) * Check for file errors when blacklist test (Nick P) * Make checks work (out of the box) with our Docker dev images (Nick P) Chris T is Chris Travers Erik H is Erik Huelsmann Nick P is Nick Prater For installation instructions and system requirements, see https://github.com/ledgersmb/LedgerSMB/blob/1.5.15/README.md The release can be downloaded from our download site at https://download.ledgersmb.org/f/Releases/1.5.15 The release can be downloaded from GitHub at https://github.com/ledgersmb/LedgerSMB/releases/tag/1.5.15 Or pulled from Docker Hub using the command $ docker pull ledgersmb/ledgersmb:1.5.15 Or pulled from Docker Hub, for the slim (150MB) image using $ docker pull ledgersmb/ledgersmb:1.5-slim These are the sha256 checksums of the uploaded files: 5555f5f894e9ecae11ce2ff93bd7ff557ce1d0952336781f6c34758992f557e3 ledgersmb-1.5.15.tar.gz 7693f4b178bc53010cc00190b03d33c84d9d0362aa24d678682c2ea1c40a0d34 ledgersmb-1.5.15.tar.gz.asc

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AR/AP Transaction entry UI: Changing dropdown to filtering select?
by Erik Huelsmann 07 Jan '18

07 Jan '18

Hi all, Traditionally, our software has offered a drop-down on the transaction entry screen to select the account to post the AR/AP amount on. However, since a number of years (since 1.3), we offer filtering selects on GL transaction entry and more recently (since 1.5), we offer filtering selects to select parts/services on an invoice. My thought today was that we probably want to change the regular dropdowns on the AR/AP transaction screen to filtering selects, at least as far as the cost/income accounts goes (I can imagine we don't want to change anything to the VAT/Tax accounts if it turns out to be complex to do, as there are usually only few of those and a dropdown doesn't mean too much searching around in the account list). Comments? -- Bye, Erik. http://efficito.com -- Hosted accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.

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Year overview 2017
by Erik Huelsmann 05 Jan '18

05 Jan '18

It's becoming a tradition for me to write about the state of the community and what has been going on in the project at this time of year. This will be the third time to look back over the past year and look into what the next could bring. == Community interest == Last year, I expressed the hope and expectation that we'd be able to keep up the same speed of development. And while development progress has been good, we were not able to keep up with the current speed when measured in number of commits: the number of commits dropped significantly this year (as measured by OpenHUB). While the number here is probably skewed by the fact that only commits on the *master* branch are being counted (and thus commits on backport branches are discarded), there is probably some truth in these numbers. One of the other expectations expressed was that with fewer regressions, more energy could be spent on progressing actual development, allowing for more thorough refactoring as well as resolving some of the longer-standing bugs. This is exactly what happened: the last few releases in the 1.4 stable series fixed many long-standing bugs and annoyances. The lower number of commits can in part be explained by this trend: with attention for refactoring and "ways forward", there's been a need to spend time discussing next steps more than there ever was before. This year, same as last year, we've seen very high traffic in the LedgerSMB Matrix/FreeNode channel: the channel aggregates updates from GitHub, Travis CI and the ledgersmb.org site as well as facilitates discussion of every aspect of our community (from helping newbee users to discussing next steps on almost every aspect of the project). Another part of the slowed development is the fact that this year was - for our project - the all-time low in our relationship with SourceForge. We felt we were forced to close our project on the site and move all of our (remaining) use of it elsewhere. Fortunately, with the help of various core committee members, we were able to quickly round up download and mailing list services. SourceForge didn't want to provide us with the list of mail addresses that were subscribed to our lists, meaning we unfortunately had to start our lists from scratch again. == Releases == The project created 20 releases in 2017, meaning it matches 2016 in that respect: - 14 stable releases: 1.5.1 through 1.5.14 - 6 oldstable releases: 1.4.37 through 1.4.42 The 1.4 branch has reached EOL (End-Of-Life) and will not see further maintenance releases from the community. In order to help those who are stuck with 1.4 for a little while longer, the project fixed many of the longer-standing problems in the last releases before the EOL date. [Note: Should you be unable to migrate to 1.5 yet are running into problems, one of the commercial support suppliers will be glad to help you; see https://ledgersmb.org/topic/commercial-support] At the end of 2016, we agreed on a backport policy for new functionality, refactorings and any other changes that might not be low-impact. In 2017, we stuck to that policy, resulting in a very stable 1.5 experience so far. This year we tightly integrated updating the LedgerSMB Docker images <https://hub.docker.com/r/ledgersmb/ledgersmb/tags/> with the release of the source code tarball: now, when we a new release is generated (and announced), the Docker images will be ready for download as well. == Packaging and installation == This year, the 'ledgersmb' package has been superseeded by two packages, one named 'ledgersmb-1.4' the other named 'ledgersmb-1.5'. These packages' naming resemblance to PostgreSQL isn't accidental: like the PostgreSQL packages, they are meant to be run side-by-side to facilitate the upgrade path from 1.4 to 1.5. One thing to be very proud of in the area of packaging that we achieved this year: the size of the Docker images went down from original sizes 2.6+GB down to less than 250MB! This brings our images in line with what users would expect of a Docker images. == Development progress == Starting off with some statistics: Over the course of the year, 262 new issues were created (out of which 73 were enhancements, 10 were "design trackers" -- issues to discuss the design of future solutions) and 162 issues were closed; 620 pull requests were created and 630 pull requests closed. Sentiment is that the 1.5 release branch is doing well: issues being fixed are rather long standing problems inherited from 1.4 (or even 1.3) rather than regressions in the releases themselves. To that extent, the new backport policy proves useful in improving stable branch reliability. As a result, developers have been spending time working on the *master* branch more than in other years. While the user experience work and JavaScript developer that we expressed in 2016 we hoped to do in 2017, didn't materialize, a lot of code clean-up has gone into the *master* branch in 2017 in a variety of areas: - Removal of the need to have an 'Inventory Entity' (which used to be used for inventory adjustments) - Removal of the need to write all PSGI responses to files before being served to the web - Refactoring and code de-duplication in the template handling framework - Elimination of warnings and notes from the database creation process - Much stricter code checking using Perl::Critic - ... and many many more ... That said, there are still 5 issues considered blocking a 1.6 release (see the 1.6 milestone <https://github.com/ledgersmb/LedgerSMB/milestone/3> for more details). Last week we discussed how to approach these 5 blockers and "unblock" a release (which provides us with the option to release, not with the obligation!). As for the "MC" (multi-currency) branches, the time to merge these to the master branch doesn't seem right *before* a 1.6 release as the destabilization effect is currently being estimated too high a risk. One of the 5 blocking issues for 1.6 is also blocking bringing MC to master: it must be possible to develop a smooth schema upgrade process in order to support the schema changes required for MC. However, such tooling isn't currently in place. By releasing 1.6 with such tooling, we'll be able to build up some experience with it before stretching its use by running the MC upgrades on it. == New functionality and improvements == The most visible improvement in LedgerSMB itself is that inventory adjustments no longer need the inventory entity and that the adjustment process no longer generates invoices. The biggest improvements in the release process would be the integration of the Docker image. Other improvements include the harmonization between the SQL Ledger migrations from 2.8 and 3.0 into LedgerSMB 1.5 -- these now use a single process with a few conditional steps, instead of two separately coded processes. Last, but probably not least, we reorganized the source tree to set aside all code that we want to part with. As most of you will know, we have a part of the code base which is rather fragile. We want to remove that part of the code base by rewriting it. Until it's rewritten, we want to make sure it's touched as little as possible. Both goals are served by setting the code apart, by communicating clearly which code is slated for replacement. == Looking forward to 2018 == Over the past releases, we have been able to shorten the release cycle, quickly releasing functional changes relevant to some instead of holding releases long until it had changes relevant to all. In that light, the first half of 2018 hopefully brings us 1.6, which would mean another significant shortening of the release cycle. With a year of refactoring and stabilizing behind us and the more-than-1-year-old Pull Requests merged, the project is in a good position to finish some of our long-wanted projects <https://github.com/ledgersmb/LedgerSMB/projects> as well as some items on the roadmap <https://ledgersmb.org/content/roadmap>. Let me finish by wishing everybody in our community a very good 2018 and expressing that we'll find a fitting role for everybody who wants to contribute to our efforts! Be it in development, testing, translating, documenting, helping others or sponsoring development! -- Bye, Erik. http://efficito.com -- Hosted accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.

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I now have a server for forums.ledgersmb.org
by Chris Bennett 03 Jan '18

03 Jan '18

It took more than one try, but I now have one. If the address can be pointed to: 104.217.196.253 including the MX too. That's a single IP, so I can add https later I finally got all the files that I was able to salvage from all over. Nothing lost but some of the conf's for Apache 2.4 and possibly some little change in some program file. I just need to do the server conf's again. Not the whole set, just the base conf's. I have everything else, which was a huge relief to not have lost a ton of work. If someone could respond to me at chris(a)bennettconstruction.us just so that I know message got to the mailing list. Sorry for the delays with this. Just had one problem after the next and I didn't catch that my server was removed by the company until too late (others had the same problem too). Chris Bennett

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ledgersmb.org site content review && proposed actions
by Erik Huelsmann 25 Dec '17

25 Dec '17

Hi, While evaluating the site statistics for ledgersmb.org (I was looking if there's anything we can/should do better to help people "find" LedgerSMB), I found a number of pages which definitely could use some love. See (some) of my findings below. Two questions: 1. What about the proposed actions? 2. Who can volunteer to address these issues/execute these proposed actions? My finding: Large number of hits, but 96% bounce rate: https://ledgersmb.org/faq/what-difference-between-sales-invoice-and-sales-o… > What would be the reason people hit this page? Because of accounting problems of their own? Or because they're searching for an accounting system? If people simply have accounting questions, can we get a lower bounce rate? Or will we simply have to accept that this is the best we can do? If anything, it looks like this page could use some reading hints (paragraph headings, etc) applied. Not as many hits as some other pages, but still quite a few, but 100% bounce rate: https://ledgersmb.org/contributed-resources > The page content doesn't feel too relevant. Anybody with more relevant content? Outdated, with quite a few hits, but 100% bounce rate: https://ledgersmb.org/faq/localization-internationalization/how-can-i-trans… > This page could really do with an update. Empty pages with 100% bounce rate: http://ledgersmb.org/faq/invoicing-0 http://ledgersmb.org/faq/void http://ledgersmb.org/faq/end-life http://ledgersmb.org/faq/support-0 http://ledgersmb.org/faq/bank-account https://ledgersmb.org/faq/utf-8 https://ledgersmb.org/faq/10 https://ledgersmb.org/faq/11 https://ledgersmb.org/faq/102 https://ledgersmb.org/faq/20 http://ledgersmb.org/faq/macos-x http://ledgersmb.org/faq/redhat-enterprise-linux https://ledgersmb.org/faq/accounts-receivable-0 > Can/Should we remove these? Or should we make sure they'll get some content? -- Bye, Erik. http://efficito.com -- Hosted accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.

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Update of Roadmap page
by Erik Huelsmann 25 Dec '17

25 Dec '17

Hi, Today, I've updated our Roadmap page (https://ledgersmb.org/content/roadmap) This is just a heads up, letting you know the most important edits: * Moved the item about a function to implement checks during database migration to "in progress" * Removed the "Done" items (after all, this is a roadmap: looking ahead) * Removed the "Decrease installation size" item: our Docker images are less than 250MB; that sounds like a nice target size. Let me know in case more edits are appropriate, but I missed them. -- Bye, Erik. http://efficito.com -- Hosted accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.

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Re: [ledgersmb-devel] Adding to OpenBSD. Is this a good time now?
by chris＠bennettconstruction.us 20 Dec '17

20 Dec '17

> -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Re: [ledgersmb-devel] Adding to OpenBSD. Is this a good time > now? > From: David G <lsmbdev(a)sbts.com.au> > Date: Tue, December 19, 2017 6:16 pm > To: devel(a)lists.ledgersmb.org > > > Hi Chris, > > What software was running the forums, and how much disk space does the > current data use? > > I have a server running on google cloud that I can look at adding a > container to. > > Regards > David G > Thanks, but I found a server that should be OK. I'm just waiting for the hardware to be set up and I can get stuff installed! I'm using mwforum which is no longer under active development. It has an addon to turn incoming mail into posts. I've never had any security problems with it. There were a few troll bots that registered, but that was a long time ago and wasn't a big problem. I do a few strange things with the incoming mail to not lose anything when the forum or PostgreSQL is offline. My main concern is that I have lost all of the recent mail for months now. If there is a way to get the mail sent again to add it to the database, that would be great, but the move away from Sourceforge also happened. Worst case might be best just to restart the mail boards from scratch starting when I get everything running again. I was already considering trying to trim off the old mail anyway since the database dumps were getting pretty large. Perhaps a couple of emails that sum up what's going on and what has been done would be the simplest way to solve the missing emails. I could make these sticky posts at the top of the boards for each mailing list. Thanks for the offer, hopefully I will get everything up and running in a few days. Thanks, Chris Bennett

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Release of ledgersmb-1.5 v1.5.14-1
by Robert J. Clay 14 Dec '17

14 Dec '17

An initial version of the debian package for ledgersmb-1.5 for version 1.5.14-1 has been released and uploaded to our apt package repository for 'main' in stretch[1].. It has also been uploaded to our PPA[2], for 'artful' (v17.10) as well as 'xenial (v16.04). (The debian source packages are available as well.) Note also that an issue installing from the PPA for Xenial has been resolved, but still if anyone has any issues please let us know. The packages at both our apt package repository and our PPA: ledgersmb-1.5 ledgersmb-1.5-apache ledgersmb-1.5-lighttpd ledgersmb-1.5-nginx ledgersmb-1.5-varnish -- Robert J. Clay rjclay(a)gmail.com, jame(a)rocasa.us GPG ID: 2448 3AE0 874D 8696 6DCD ECF4 198C AB6F 43B7 EA9A. [1] https://apt.ledgersmb.org/ [2] https://launchpad.net/~ledgersmb/+archive/ubuntu/main/+packages

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LedgerSMB 1.5.14 released
by Erik Huelsmann 08 Dec '17

08 Dec '17

The LedgerSMB development team is happy to announce yet another new version of its open source ERP and accounting application. This release contains the following fixes and improvements: Changelog for 1.5.14 * Post (instead of save) transaction on depreciation approval (Erik H) * Fix role prefix set on copied databases from setup.pl (Erik H, #3219) * Fix argument names due to move to PGObject::Util::DBAdmin (Erik H) * Fix posting of vendor invoice fails with vendor-price in parts (Erik H, #3081) * Fix example Apache config file's SSLRequireSSL directive (Erik H, #3272) * Fix invoice shows fewer $decimalplaces than configured (Erik H, #3271) * Fix upgrade code using db transactions incorrectly (Erik H, #3289) * Improve 'in progress' feedback by fading submitted content (Erik H, #3283) * Add visual feedback to form input validation in setup.pl (Erik H) * Implement checks for correct loading of sql/modules/ files (Erik H) * Correct Roles.sql and PriceMatrix.sql loading errors (Erik H) * Fix 'uninitialized variable' warnings on database creation (Erik H, #3266) * Find part number on invoice/order by substring; was prefix (Erik H, #3266) * Find part description on invoice/order by substring; was 'full text' (Erik H) * Change part search on invoice/order to be case insensitive (Erik H, #3266) Erik H is Erik Huelsmann For installation instructions and system requirements, see https://github.com/ledgersmb/LedgerSMB/blob/1.5.14/README.md The release can be downloaded from our download site at http://download.ledgersmb.org///1.5.14 The release can be downloaded from GitHub at https://github.com/ledgersmb/LedgerSMB/releases/tag/1.5.14 Or pulled from Docker Hub using the command $ docker pull ledgersmb/ledgersmb:1.5.14 These are the sha256 checksums of the uploaded files: 90ee3e1847c53d3fbc12da99510a458c38ed5b25b4d87a6f2f598fc0c7b4ffaf ledgersmb-1.5.14.tar.gz 6f9f0f0302f92bcd83bf6a6c12e5d5eef593650d61ced8150c6016f5c6ed16f4 ledgersmb-1.5.14.tar.gz.asc

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New Docker Compose based development & (local) test infrastructure
by Erik Huelsmann 25 Nov '17

25 Nov '17

Hi all, This week, I completed Docker Compose based development & test infrastructure which will help you get started with just a few commands: $ git clone https://github.com/ledgersmb/LedgerSMB.git ledgersmb $ git clone https://github.com/ledgersmb/ledgersmb-dev-docker.git $ cd ledgersmb $ LSMB_DEV_VERSION=master docker-compose \ -f ../ledgersmb-dev-docker/docker-compose.yml up -d With these 3 commands, you have a fully operational environment ready for development of LedgerSMB on your local machine with all the dependencies (inside the docker containers) required to run the test suite. The Docker Compose file starts 3 containers wrapping the current directory (ledgersmb) and starting all the required processes for testing. Running the test-suite (basic part) is as easy as: $ docker exec -ti lsmb-master-devel prove and running the full test suite is as easy as invoking: $ docker exec -ti lsmb-master-devel \ prove --pgtap-option dbname=lsmbtestdb -r t/ xt/ If you changed the Perl sources, please run $ docker restart lsmb-master-devel before continuing your tests (Starman needs to be reloaded to serve the new logic). If you wanted to contribute, but preparing a development environment looked daunting, this may be the right time to dip your toe and try the waters! -- Bye, Erik. http://efficito.com -- Hosted accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.

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