Background: Much research has been conducted to investigate the impact of Continuous Integration (CI) on the productivity and quality of open-source projects. Most of studies have analyzed the impact of adopting a CI server service (e.g, Travis-CI) but did not analyze CI sub-practices. Aims: We aim to evaluate the impact of five CI sub-practices with respect to the productivity and quality of GitHub open-source projects. Method: We collect CI sub-practices of 90 relevant open-source projects for a period of 2 years. We use regression models to analyze whether projects upholding the CI sub-practices are more productive and/or generate fewer bugs. We also perform a qualitative document analysis to understand whether CI best practices are related to a higher quality of projects. Results: Our findings reveal a correlation between the Build Activity and Commit Activity sub-practices and the number of merged pull requests. We also observe a correlation between the Build Activity, Build Health and Time to Fix Broken Builds sub-practices and number of bug-related issues. The qualitative analysis reveals that projects with the best values for CI sub-practices face fewer CI-related problems compared to projects that exhibit the worst values for CI sub-practices. Conclusions: We recommend that projects should strive to uphold the several CI sub-practices as they can impact in the productivity and quality of projects.
翻译:目标:我们的目标是评估五个CI次级做法对GitHub开放源码项目的生产率和质量的影响。方法:我们收集了90个相关的开放源码项目的次级做法,为期两年。我们使用回归模型分析维护CI次级做法的项目是否更有成效和/或产生更少的错误。我们还进行定性文件分析,以了解CI最佳做法是否与更高质量的项目相关。结果:我们的调查结果显示,建设活动和开展活动次级做法与合并的拉动请求数量之间存在关联。我们还注意到,“建设活动,建设健康与时间以固定断裂构建”的次级做法与与与错误相关问题的数量之间存在关联。定性分析表明,具有CI次级做法最佳价值的项目在CI次级做法中可能面临更少的收益和/或生成更少的错误。我们还进行定性文件分析,以了解CI最佳做法最佳做法是否与更高质量的项目相关。结果:我们的结论显示,建设活动和开展活动开展活动与开展活动分做法的次级做法与展示几个最差的项目之间存在关联性。我们发现,与CI的次级做法项目相比,我们坚持了一些最差的质量项目。