How do software developers use gitHub actions to automate their workflows?
Date
2021
Authors
Kinsman, T.
Wessel, M.
Gerosa, M.A.
Treude, C.
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Conference paper
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IEEE International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, 2021, vol.1, pp.420-431
Statement of Responsibility
Timothy Kinsman, Mairieli Wessel, Marco A. Gerosa, Christoph Treude
Conference Name
IEEE/ACM 18th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) (17 May 2021 - 19 Nov 2021 : Madrid, Spain)
Abstract
Automated tools are frequently used in social coding repositories to perform repetitive activities that are part of the distributed software development process. Recently, GitHub introduced GitHub Actions, a feature providing automated work-flows for repository maintainers. Although several Actions have been built and used by practitioners, relatively little has been done to evaluate them. Understanding and anticipating the effects of adopting such kind of technology is important for planning and management. Our research is the first to investigate how developers use Actions and how several activity indicators change after their adoption. Our results indicate that, although only a small subset of repositories adopted GitHub Actions to date, there is a positive perception of the technology. Our findings also indicate that the adoption of GitHub Actions increases the number of monthly rejected pull requests and decreases the monthly number of commits on merged pull requests. These results are especially relevant for practitioners to understand and prevent undesirable effects on their projects.
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©2021 IEEE