Hi Chris,

For the development of the custom module, you can follow this link, http://www.odoo.com/documentation/10.0/howtos/backend.html .

I dont understand what exactly you are asking.

I'm looking for the correct use cases for init and update switches, and the correct way to apply updates to a custom module. Should you use the --update <module_name>? Is this the same for updating a module that's a dependency of another module? Do you update the parent or child with --update?

Same for installing a new module, do you use --init <module_name>?

Do you need to --init <module_name> before you can run Odoo without needing --init or update, as long as it is available in the addons_path?