What's cookin' at xTuple?

It seems like it's been relatively quiet from xTuple development in the last few months as the last two releases at first glance appear to be mostly bug fixes.  However we have quietly been taking big architectural strides in those releases that will manifest themselves in the remainder of 2009:

First, we've partnered with BitRock to completely overhaul the xTuple installer program so now it not only runs exactly the same on all platforms, but is available for Linux as well.  These installers are available today in the recently released version 3.2.2 of xTuple.  The larger benefit we expect to gain from this paradigm shift is the ability in future development to notify users of patches and updates through the application, and to enable it to automatically download and run update routines which should substantially speed up the release and dispersion of bug fixes, and make the upgrade process itself a whole lot easier.

In the next couple weeks xTuple will be releasing it's first two commercial Extension Packages: Batch Manager and Point of Sale.  Batch Manager is a special utility application users of commercial editions have long enjoyed that enables the ability to schedule repetative tasks such as cost updates, send reports via email, send incident and event notifications via email and create EDI profiles that allow users to merge data content with E-mail or text file submissions that can be automatically transmitted to customers or vendors.  This utility will soon be available to PostBooks users as a separate Extension Package they can purchase and install on PostBooks version 3.2.2.  The Point of Sale module will allow people in retail environments to take advantage of xTuple by adding cash register capabilities to the application.  This development is particularly exciting because it is exclusively built with xTuple's Extension technology.  You can learn more about Point of Sale here.

Development on version 3.3, due for release in July, is also well underway.  We are targeting an Alpha release this month.  The new Distribution Resource Planning system is substantially complete.  This development not only adds the ability to do multi-site planning of inventory transfers, but moves a great deal of MRP functionality to the Standard Edition of xTuple ERP.  Good progress is being made on Tax Internationalization in large part to a major code contribution being made by our friends and partners at Aptsource.  The alpha should also include some other goodies requested of our users such as the ability to reverse posted cash receipts, consolidation of all customer related functionality to the customer window (yes we heard you: you don't want to have to go to 6 different screens to view and conduct various activities related to your customer!), and for programmers the ability to launch core screens and feed them parameters from scripting.  So now you will be able truely integrate an xTuple Extension seamlessly with the xTuple Core.  To top it off version 3.3 will be built with the LGPL licensed Qt 4.5.1, which means individual contributors who have held back because they can't afford to pay for the pricy commercial edition of Qt to get involved with xTuple no longer need to worry about that.  Time permitting, we might even be able to dip into the the new Qt 4.5.1 goodie bag and take adavantage of things like the new script debugger.

Finally, if you're a developer check out our completely overhauled Developer Zone that finally explains in plain english how xTuple development works and how to get involved!

So there's lots of great developments out now and on the near horizon.  Thank you to all our community members making contributions, we will be working those in to the code base, and keep your eye out for that 3.3 Alpha!