Bench is a command-line utility that helps you to install, update, and manage multiple sites for Frappe/ERPNext applications on [*nix systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix-like) for development and production.
We recommend using either the Docker Installation or the Easy Install Script to setup a Production Environment. For Development, you may choose either of the three methods to setup an instance.
Otherwise, if you are looking to evaluate ERPNext, you can also download the [Virtual Machine Image](https://erpnext.com/download) or register for [a free trial on erpnext.com](https://erpnext.com/pricing).
A Frappe/ERPNext instance can be setup and replicated easily using [Docker](https://docker.com). The officially supported Docker installation can be used to setup either of both Development and Production environments.
A quick setup guide for both the environments can be found below. For more details, check out the [Frappe/ERPNext Docker Repository](https://github.com/frappe/frappe_docker).
The Easy Install script should get you going with a Frappe/ERPNext setup with minimal manual intervention and effort. Since there are a lot of configurations being automatically setup, we recommend executing this script on a fresh server.
**Note:** This script works only on GNU/Linux based server distributions, and has been designed and tested to work on Ubuntu 16.04+, CentOS 7+, and Debian-based systems.
> This script installs Version 12 by default. It is untested with Version 13 and above. Containerized or manual installs are recommended for newer setups.
The script should then prompt you for the MySQL root password and an Administrator password for the Frappe/ERPNext instance, which will then be saved under `$HOME/passwords.txt` of the user used to setup the instance. This script will then install the required stack, setup bench and a default ERPNext instance.
When the setup is complete, you will be able to access the system at `http://<your-server-ip>`, wherein you can use the administrator password to login.
- Create an Issue in this repository with the log file attached.
- Search for an existing issue or post the log file on the [Frappe/ERPNext Discuss Forum](https://discuss.erpnext.com/c/bench) with the tag `installation_problem` under "Install/Update" category.
For more information and advanced setup instructions, check out the [Easy Install Documentation](https://github.com/frappe/bench/blob/develop/docs/easy_install.md).
Some might want to manually setup a bench instance locally for development. To quickly get started on installing bench the hard way, you can follow the guide on [Installing Bench and the Frappe Framework](https://frappe.io/docs/user/en/installation).
You'll have to set up the system dependencies required for setting up a Frappe Environment. Checkout [docs/installation](https://github.com/frappe/bench/blob/develop/docs/installation.md) for more information on this. If you've already set up, install bench via pip:
- **Optional**: If the database for the site does not reside on localhost or listens on a custom port, you can use the flags `--db-host` to set a custom host and/or `--db-port` to set a custom port.
For more in-depth information on commands and their usage, follow [Commands and Usage](https://github.com/frappe/bench/blob/develop/docs/commands_and_usage.md). As for a consolidated list of bench commands, check out [Bench Usage](https://github.com/frappe/bench/blob/develop/docs/bench_usage.md).
If you wish to extend the capabilities of bench with your own custom Frappe Application, you may follow [Adding Custom Bench Commands](https://github.com/frappe/bench/blob/develop/docs/bench_custom_cmd.md).
[Bench Manager](https://github.com/frappe/bench_manager) is a GUI frontend for Bench with the same functionalties. You can install it by executing the following command:
```sh
$ bench setup manager
```
- **Note:** This will create a new site to setup Bench Manager, if you want to set it up on an existing site, run the following commands:
To contribute and develop on the bench CLI tool, clone this repo and create an editable install. In editable mode, you may get the following warning everytime you run a bench command:
WARN: bench is installed in editable mode!
This is not the recommended mode of installation for production. Instead, install the package from PyPI with: `pip install frappe-bench`
To clear up the editable install and switch to a stable version of bench, uninstall via pip and delete the corresponding egg file from the python path.
```sh
# Delete bench installed in editable install
$ rm -r $(find ~ -name '*.egg-info')
$ pip3 uninstall frappe-bench
# Install latest released version of bench
$ pip3 install -U frappe-bench
```
To confirm the switch, check the output of `bench src`. It should change from something like `$HOME/bench-repo` to `/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages` and stop the editable install warnings from getting triggered at every command.
Bench's version information can be accessed via `bench.VERSION` in the package's __init__.py file. Eversince the v5.0 release, we've started publishing releases on GitHub, and PyPI.
GitHub: https://github.com/frappe/bench/releases
PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/frappe-bench
From v5.3.0, we partially automated the release process using [@semantic-release](.github/workflows/release.yml). Under this new pipeline, we do the following steps to make a release:
1. Merge `develop` into the `staging` branch
1. Merge `staging` into the latest stable branch, which is `v5.x` at this point.
This triggers a GitHub Action job that generates a bump commit, drafts and generates a GitHub release, builds a Python package and publishes it to PyPI.
The intermediate `staging` branch exists to mediate the `bench.VERSION` conflict that would arise while merging `develop` and stable. On develop, the version has to be manually updated (for major release changes). The version tag plays a role in deciding when checks have to be made for new Bench releases.
> Note: We may want to kill the convention of separate branches for different version releases of Bench. We don't need to maintain this the way we do for Frappe & ERPNext. A single branch named `stable` would sustain.
