Development
The odoo command
The odoo command that the dev shell, services.odoo-nix and the container share, its database, module and project subcommands, and how everything else passes through to odoo-bin.
On this page
The dev shell, services.odoo-nix and the container image share one odoo command. db, module, project, shell and test are odoo-nix's own subcommands. Anything else, server (the default with no subcommand), scaffold, populate, cloc, deploy, neutralize and the rest, passes straight through to the real odoo-bin, so nothing from Odoo is lost.
-c/--config, -d/--database and --db-host, --db-port, --db-user, --db-password are accepted before the subcommand, the way odoo-bin takes its own flags. The configuration defaults to $ODOO_RC, then ./odoo.conf. A subcommand with no database falls back to -d, then $ODOO_NIX_DB, then db_name in odoo.conf.
Databases
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
odoo db list | List the databases, with version compatibility. |
odoo db create <DB> [--demo] [--lang <LANG>] | Create an empty database, with no modules installed. |
odoo db provision [DB] [--modules-file <FILE>] [--no-backup] | Create the database and install base and everything in modules.txt, or migrate it when it already has an Odoo schema. Idempotent. |
odoo db upgrade <M[,M2]> [DB | --all] | Update the named modules (-u), with live progress and a per-module summary. |
odoo db migrate [DB | --all] [...] | Update the modules whose code or version changed. Run it after pulling new code. See Migrations. |
odoo db duplicate <SRC> <DEST> [--neutralize] | Copy a database, schema and filestore. |
odoo db rename <OLD> <NEW> | Rename a database and its filestore. |
odoo db drop <DB> [--yes] | Drop a database and its filestore. |
odoo db backup [DB | --all] [--path <DIR>] [--format zip|dump] [--keep-days <N>] | Back up to <data_dir>/backups/<DB>/ by default. zip (the default) is schema and filestore, Odoo's own Database Manager format; dump is a pg_dump custom-format dump with no filestore. |
odoo db restore <DB> [<BACKUP>] [...] | Restore a backup into <DB>, overwriting an existing one unless --no-force, then migrate it unless --no-migrate. With no file it fetches the newest backup from the remote store: see Restore a production backup. |
--all means every database matching dbfilter, when the filter does not use the per-request %h or %d placeholders.
Modules and the workspace
These need a git checkout and modules.txt, so they work only in the dev shell. Elsewhere they fail with a message.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
odoo module add [MODULE …] | Pick OCA modules, add the repositories they need, record them in modules.txt and re-lock. |
odoo module add <GIT_URL | OWNER/REPO> [BRANCH] [PATH] | Add any git repository as a submodule and record its modules. |
odoo module add-bundle [NAME …] | Add a curated bundle of OCA modules. |
odoo module remove [--force] [--keep-repos] <MODULE | REPO> … | Take modules out of modules.txt, and the repositories nothing needs any more out of the workspace. |
odoo project update [--no-migrate] | Pull every submodule to the tip of its pinned branch, regenerate the managed blocks of pyproject.toml, uv lock, then migrate every database matching dbfilter unless --no-migrate. |
odoo project relock [UV_ARGS…] | The project's one re-lock: regenerate the managed blocks of pyproject.toml from what is on disk, uv lock with the build-dependency block in step, pulling nothing. UV_ARGS go to uv lock. See Re-locking a project. |
After any of them, run direnv reload so Nix derives addons_path again and rebuilds the Python environment. Manage modules covers them in full.
The whole project
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
odoo project backup [--format zip|dump] [--path <DIR>] [--keep-days <N>] | Back up every database matching dbfilter. With --path, each one goes into its own <DIR>/<DB>/. |
odoo project restore [--restore <DB> <PATH> …] [...] | Restore several database and file pairs in one batch, or, with no --restore, the project database (settings.dbName) from the remote store. |
odoo shell [DB] | Odoo's Python REPL, without workers or HTTP, so it runs next to a live server. |
odoo test <M[,M2]> [DB] | Run modules' tests. It refuses to run when browser tours would be skipped, because Odoo reports a skipped tour like a pass: it needs the websocket-client package and a headless browser (testBrowser). ODOO_NIX_TEST_ALLOW_SKIP=1 runs anyway. |
Progress
db upgrade, db migrate and db provision read Odoo's own module-loading log records and render them as a live progress bar on a terminal, or as plain lines under journald or CI. Either way they end with a table of what was touched, how long each module took and which migration scripts ran. Odoo commits each module's update as it completes, so a failure part-way is reported as "N modules already committed, module X failed", not as an all-or-nothing rollback that Odoo does not have.
Backup files
Backups use OCA auto_backup's naming: <data_dir>/backups/<DB>/<TIMESTAMP>.dump.zip (or .dump for --format dump), with the timestamp as YYYY_MM_DD_HH_MM_SS and no database name in the file name, since the folder carries it. Backups made by this command and by an installed auto_backup are interchangeable in the same folder.
--keep-days prunes the way auto_backup does: every backup whose name sorts before "now minus N days", formatted the same way, is deleted.
Every backup and snapshot is written owner-only (0600), and any directory created for one is 0700.