Apple's new version of its operating system, OS X Lion, is due to be released to the public in the next couple of weeks. The new user interface features are very nice. Upgrading promises to be simple and inexpensive.
This is good for consumers but trouble for xTuple users. You see, current releases of OpenRPT and of PostBooks® and other editions of xTuple ERP do not work well on Lion.
Thanks to one of our community members, we learned several weeks ago that previewing and printing reports with xTuple ERP 3.7.1 crashes the application on OS X Lion. Since then we've seen some other problems, too. Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do about this yet — the version of the toolkit we use to create our applications doesn't work well on the new Mac OS.
We do not yet have a release date for xTuple applications that will run on the new Mac operating system. We will let you know as soon as we do. In the meanwhile, please try to hold back from upgrading your Macs to the new version of the operating system.
The technicalities:
We currently build xTuple ERP and related software with a cross-platform development framework called Qt. Qt version 4.8 specifically adds support for OS X Lion (10.7) but has not been released yet. There are known incompatibilities between Qt 4.7 and Lion. The OpenRPT crash on Lion is fixed when we build with the Qt 4.8 technology preview. At this time (mid-July, 2011), all we can do is wait for Qt to catch up with Apple and release Qt 4.8.
Once Qt 4.8 is released, we'll be able to build and test the xTuple apps in a fully supported environment.
Gil Moskowitz
Gil joined xTuple in 2005 to develop the first version of multi-currency support in our products. He helped xTuple transition from its original closed source OpenMFG product to the commercial open source company we are today. Before coming to xTuple, Gil worked for several large and small software companies in a variety of roles, including Informix Software, where he managed the database backup/restore utility group. He always advocates for, and delivers, high-quality products through improvements to the software development process. Ask about his other jobs next time you see him — ! He has a B.A. in Biology from Reed College and an M.S. in Computer Science from Old Dominion University.