In Chapter 1, Installing the Odoo Development Environment, we saw how to set up an Odoo instance using only the standard core addons, which are shipped by the editor. This chapter focuses on adding noncore addons to an Odoo instance, be it your own addons, or third-party addons, such as the ones maintained by the Odoo Community Association (OCA).
About the terminology – addon versus module
In this book, we will use the term addon or addon 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 addons, and app for addon modules that are properly defined as applications, that is, have an entry in the main menu of Odoo.
In this book, we will use the term addon or addon 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 addons, and app for addon modules that are properly defined as applications, that is, have an entry in the main menu of Odoo.