Survey Software

[David Nalley]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 2:50 PM, David Nalley <david at gnsa.us> wrote:
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> At the Events FAD we spent a good chunk of time looking at and working
> on some of the Lime Survey dependencies. Unfortunately, they have
> modified some (and they claim most) of the bundled libraries,
> effectively forking them. We talked about a number of different
> mitigation strategies. We can get a number of people involved and try
> and get these modifications accepted upstream, however that is likely
> at least a month and likely many months of slow moving work, with no
> guarantee of success.
>
> I've included the IRC conversation below that I had with one of the
> limesurvey devs.
>
> We talked about a number of solutions at events FAD, with suggestions
> ranging from, pushing patches upstream, to using different software,
> to forking.
> The path of least resistance is using different software, and I found
> one package called phpESP which looks ok, I haven't found any bundled
> libs at all in a really brief perusal of source. The community seems
> somewhat active (the latest version was released in Janary)
>
> Soooo - please take a look and see if it meets MKTG's needs. I may try
> and package this tonight regardless of MKTG's decision, but if someone
> wants to beat me to it, I have a 4 hour trip back, so feel free to
> pick it up.
>
>
>
> 09:35  c_schmitz: sorry for the lag - basically the issue is that you
> guys bundle libraries (which every web app
> does, and we break them out and bundle the package separately) but you
> guys have modified at least one of
> those libraries, so packaging the upstream library doesn't really
> help, as we are missing those changes.
> 09:42  yes, ke4qqq
> 09:42  we modified almost all liberaries
> 09:42  due to bugs etc
> 09:43  we communicated these bugs to the devs of these these libraries mostly
> 09:43  but they are very slow to fix
> 09:44  so I don't recommend to break out any of teh packages
> 09:44  unfortunately our packaging guidelines don't permit us to not -
> (and debian is the same way)
> 09:45  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:No_Bundled_Libraries
> 09:45  well, then you have a problem
> 09:50  I would not know how to solve this
> 09:51  using your bundled libraries will introduce certain bugs
> 09:51  bundled libraries=separate packages
> 09:51  yes
> 09:52  which on the other hand will mean that we will have bogus bugs
> reported to us
> 09:52  for which we can't really give support
> 09:52  well we are actually discussing this at a Fedora Activity day -
> and hopefully we can add an extra voice to
> get those patches accepted upstream
> 09:52  won't be a short process unfortunately
> 09:53  but in the long run hopefully better for everyone
> 09:53  sure, but this is a huge problem with every packaging
> 09:53  Ubuntu packaging is a little more relaxed about that
> 09:53  yes it is (/me packages a number of webapps for Fedora and deal
> with it a lot)
> 09:54  I totally appreciate your effort
> 09:54  It will help the LImeSurvey project to have to as a Linux package
> 09:54  better: Fedora package
> 09:55  you should also get in touch with nijaba
> 09:55  (Nicolas Barcet)
> 09:55  since he is the Ubunut packager
> 09:55  Ubuntu
> 09:55  ok, I'll do so
>
>
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Meant to include a link:
http://www.butterfat.net/wiki/Projects/phpESP/