Hi,


Our organization is considering deploying LimeSurvey and I had important questions that I was not able to find in the official documentation:

• What is the release cycle of versions? For example: Minor version (X.Y) every 6 months and bug fixes (X.Y.Z) every month
• What is the general support for released versions? For how long is a major/minor version supported (bug fixes and security fixes)?
• Is there some kind of security vulnerabilities announcements somewhere (Notification list, dedicated forums etc)?

Thanks in advance!

Jean-Philippe

gaudreaj wrote: Hi,

• What is the release cycle of versions? For example: Minor version (X.Y) every 6 months and bug fixes (X.Y.Z) every month

Here is my personal view (I am not involved in development and have no deeper insights, just the experience of hanging out in this forum a lot) of the release cycles:
When it's ready, its ready. So there is no fixed cycle for minor versions and bug fixes are released very frequently, sometimes more than once a week, if necessary

What is the general support for released versions? For how long is a major/minor version supported (bug fixes and security fixes)?

When a new version comes out, the previous version is generally is not supported anymore. It is highly recommended to upgrade. However, in some cases the Limesurvey developer team has offered LTS support for some versions. This means the previous version is still supported, while a newer one is out already. However, generally there is no exact date to until when this version is supported.

Hi,
to get an idea what happened in the past:
here you find the release notes from 2007 until now.
github.com/LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey/blob/ma...cs/release_notes.txt

Joffm

Hi Jean Philippe,


First thing: limesurvey.org offers a SaaS where we host thousands of professional users. We guarantee them a continuous service, and they feel in a perfectly stable environment. We manage for them the updates, and let them choose when they should upgrade to a new major version.

To answer directly to your question:

What is the release cycle of versions?
we're in a typical open source approach: release early, release often. we're trying to make LimeSurvey evolve a lot since few years, so this is for us the perfect software development philosophy:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often



We're pushing the LimeSurvey users to update and upgrade as much as possible, fixing bugs and adding features on the fly.

We don't have so many people in the community involved in testing the beta of the new major versions (like 3.0). So when we release a major one, we often publish a lot of bug fixes in the coming weeks after that. But indeed, this is the case for most software, and we don't release new major version that often. We're now at 3.x, and 4.x should not be out before end of 2019, maybe 2020. Also, survey themes and question themes will be compatibles between 3.0 and 4.0, so it should not be a big deal to upgrade.

What is the general support for released versions? For how long is a major/minor version supported (bug fixes and security fixes)?

About the "LTS" concept, as I told you first: we're having people on our SaaS still using the the 2.73 version. So we must apply to it the security fixes, and if they're critical (this doesn't happen often) we do it immediately. Also, LimeSurvey is Open Source, and any one can fork it. Denis Chenu, a french developer and one of the contributor of LimeSurvey core, host a fork of LimeSurvey 2.06 for his clients. He applies to it not only the security fixes, but also fixes for PHP 7 hosting, and even improvements of his own:
github.com/SondagesPro/LimeSurvey-SondagesPro

Is there some kind of security vulnerabilities announcements somewhere
If any security release is done, you'll have a clear alert about it in your installation at login via the comfortUpdate component. Git commits related to security are prefixed with [security], eg:
github.com/LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey/commit/...c8424b3005deb49a47f7


To summarize:
If you use our SaaS, you don't have to worry about anything. Your installation will be maintained by the team, we'll update for you your installation, you'll feel in a perfectly stable environment. If we do a major release, you'll can upgrade when you feel ready.

If you're in self hosted environment, subscribe to the comfortUpdate for easy update.

Then, update in two cases:
- each time we do a security release (clearly warn after login)
- when you face a bug in your installation (we're now at 3.14, and only advanced features still have some small bugs)
- and at least once a month, or each couple of month, to get the new features and the minor fixes.

LouisGac wrote: What is the release cycle of versions?
we're in a typical open source approach:

The threadstarter seems to be looking for something like this:
developer.joomla.org/news/586-joomla-development-strategy.html
symfony.com/doc/current/contributing/community/releases.html

Since LimeSurvey is based on Yii 1.1, at least the release cycle of Yii will be part of the game.

Yii 1.1.20 is compatible with PHP 7.2 that, at the time of this writing, has an announced security support until November 30, 2020

www.yiiframework.com/news/178/yii-1-1-20-is-released


Since you mentioned LS 4. Will it be based on Yii 2.X?

jelo wrote:
Since LimeSurvey is based on Yii 1.1, at least the release cycle of Yii will be part of the game.

Yii 1.1.20 is compatible with PHP 7.2 that, at the time of this writing, has an announced security support until November 30, 2020

www.yiiframework.com/news/178/yii-1-1-20-is-released


Since you mentioned LS 4. Will it be based on Yii 2.X?

Hard to say, I hope so. Yii2.X and Bootstrap 4 would be perfect.

LouisGac wrote: Bootstrap 4 would be perfect.

Arg … bootstrap4 is a web semantic heresy
github.com/marmelab/universal.css#faq

:pinch:

DenisChenu wrote:

LouisGac wrote: Bootstrap 4 would be perfect.

Arg … bootstrap4 is a web semantic heresy
github.com/marmelab/universal.css#faq

:pinch:

You were already saying that about Bootstrap 3
But indeed, LS4 will provide retro-compatibility with LS3 themes, so with BS3, so it will be multi-engine, so it will be possible to bring any other CSS framework with it.

I was thinking about Foundation. What would you suggest?

www.webdesigndegreecenter.org/ten-best-c...evelopers-designers/

LouisGac wrote:

DenisChenu wrote:

LouisGac wrote: Bootstrap 4 would be perfect.

Arg … bootstrap4 is a web semantic heresy

You were already saying that about Bootstrap 3

BS3 have really less part than that .

BS4 : they do more and more issue like that, it's really incomprehensible … totally the contrary of ldo support guide : codeguide.co/

Else : i'm not for one CSS framework . Here it's more a BS4 issue only .

If able to use own framework, unsure maybe www.knacss.com/ but not for core surely … (i relly like the em/rem system than the px system ) (or maybe only github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/v4-dev/di...bootstrap-reboot.css ;) )

Adding some BS part for "user know using text-danger etc …"