Use case/problem: I updates today via comfort update to the interesting build 160414 (from tomorrow?!). This update change the appearance of matrix style questions (bug: instead of horitontaly the radio items are shown vertical, but the labels are still horizontal). This blocked an ongoing human factors study (driving simulator). An experimenter reported the problem and I could roll back 160413. Solved.

It is somehow annoying that via comfort update our system is used for beta testing.
Could you explain which tests are performed before an update is marked 'stable'?
There could not be every day a new stable version: github.com/LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey/releases

I am not a developer, just a forum moderator, and I am not speaking for the team:

Limesurvey is a community project, thus it depends on the community to test and create bug reports. Unfortunately very few users install Limesurvey Betas and Release candidates and give it a good test run and report bugs.

In my opinion, 2.5 was released too early with the label "stable" and there are still showing up quite a few bugs. From what I heard, the decision to mark 2.5 as stable was based on the fact there were little to no bugs left in the bug tracker, so it was marked stable. I assume due to the lack of people testing a lot of bugs where not detected. Once the version was marked as stable suddenly a lot of bugs were reported, and the developer team seems to work hard on resolving them, which is why you see so many releases.

I agree with you that this is not an ideal and I wish this would have been handled otherwise. But we as the community have to support the developers with bug testing, otherwise LS can not work.

I personally don't use 2.5 for production, I run 2.06 and will only move on to 2.5 when I personally feel that it is ready. At the moment I have 2.5 installed as a "playground" and for testing, so I can provide bug reports.

From what I know, there was a problem with matrix/array questions there was a problem with the labels not showing when changing the screen size, which was supposed to be solved in one of the latest versions, but obviously this brought in a new bug.

So I would suggest to make a bug report, if you are on the latest version of LS 2.5 already.

By the way: ComfortUpdate is not a service from the Limesurvey community, but comes from the Limesurvey GmbH. So I think you should get in touch with their support team to voice your concerns about this, because there is little chance that they will actually see this here in the forum.

holch wrote: [...] By the way: ComfortUpdate is not a service from the Limesurvey community, but comes from the Limesurvey GmbH. So I think you should get in touch with their support team to voice your concerns about this, because there is little chance that they will actually see this here in the forum.

Ok thanks for that info. I thought we are supporting the community with the update licence. And I'm supprised that they will not see it in the forum, because the imprint states that these sites are hosted by Limesurvey GmbH.

If a developer changes the layout and has no test case (e.g. all questions type in mockup survey) for a quick error check, it is strange.
I think I will ignore the comfort update and manually let our system lag behind some days/weeks, so we are not part of this beta-testing.

Not all developers show up in the forum on a regular basis (especially at the moment, as they are quite busy with bug fixing). The quickest way is to contact them directly or post a bug report.

Developers that I see very regulary on the forum are Denis, Tpartner, Mazi. And of course not every developer is involved in every part of Limesurvey development.

holch wrote: .....
Developers that I see very regulary on the forum are Denis, Tpartner, Mazi. And of course not every developer is involved in every part of Limesurvey development.

Denis, tpartner and Mazi are "external" developper. Not directly linked with limesurvey GMBH.

LouisGac come sometimes here : send him a Private Message maybe.

Denis

krause wrote: I think I will ignore the comfort update and manually let our system lag behind some days/weeks, so we are not part of this beta-testing.

That isn't a issue with comfortupdater. The LS 2.06LTS is offered via comfortupdater too.

Today again...
It seems that in one of the last updates the date-field was renderer unusable:
bugs.limesurvey.org/view.php?id=11189

This has the implication that survey with a mandatory date field can not be finished.
So, the registration for the final oral exam is not possible. But was working before for several month.
We thankfully using LimeSurvey for about 5 years, but the trouble of the last 6 month (2.5+) is horrific.

This "we-code-a-little-bit-and-see-what-will happen"-approach is completly unprofessional.
Please, make at least a test survey that include every single question type
and before a 'stable' version is delivered this survey must work. That's the cheapest test case I can think of.

It's unbelievable that this is recommended for production systems (even paying for the 'comfort' updater) and someone remotely can render the whole system unusable, just by playing around with the code and providing 'stable' releases.

Hi Krause,

I can totally understand your frustration and the current situation isn't ideal. If you want to avoid those suprises I can only recommend to run your production server LS 2.06LTS.

I personally would not recommend 2.5 for critical applications. Unfortunately LS 2.5 was marked as "stable" far too early for my taste. The developers seem to work pretty hard on getting bugs fixed, but as you already perceived, this is not always sucessfull to the desirable degree, with closing one bug and opening another one.

This is my personal view of things and I am not speaking for the team (I am only a forum moderator anyway). I would have wished the approach to 2.5 be a different one. I personally would run all production on 2.06LTS and test LS 2.5 in parallel.