The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests

Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice that builds and tests software frequently (e.g., at every push). One main motivator to adopt CI is the potential to deliver software functionalities more quickly than not using CI. However, there is little empirical evidence to support t...

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Main Authors: BERNARDO, João Helis, DA COSTA, Daniel Alencar, KULESZA, Uirá, TREUDE, Christoph
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Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8769
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9772/viewcontent/joao.pdf
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spelling sg-smu-ink.sis_research-97722024-05-23T05:34:41Z The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests BERNARDO, João Helis DA COSTA, Daniel Alencar KULESZA, Uirá TREUDE, Christoph Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice that builds and tests software frequently (e.g., at every push). One main motivator to adopt CI is the potential to deliver software functionalities more quickly than not using CI. However, there is little empirical evidence to support that CI helps projects deliver software functionalities more quickly. Through the analysis of 162,653 pull requests (PRs) of 87 GitHub projects, we empirically study whether adopting a CI service (TRAVISCI) can quicken the time to deliver merged PRs. We complement our quantitative study by analyzing 450 survey responses from participants of 73 software projects. Our results reveal that adopting a CI service may not necessarily quicken the delivery of merge PRs. Instead, the pivotal benefit of a CI service is to improve the decision making on PR submissions, without compromising the quality or overloading the project’s reviewers and maintainers. The automation provided by CI and the boost in developers’ confidence are key advantages of adopting a CI service. Furthermore, open-source projects planning to attract and retain developers should consider the use of a CI service in their project, since CI is perceived to lower the contribution barrier while making contributors feel more confident and engaged in the project. 2023-07-01T07:00:00Z text application/pdf https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8769 info:doi/10.1007/s10664-023-10327-6 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9772/viewcontent/joao.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Continuous integration Pull request Delivery time Code review Programming Languages and Compilers Software Engineering
institution Singapore Management University
building SMU Libraries
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider SMU Libraries
collection InK@SMU
language English
topic Continuous integration
Pull request
Delivery time
Code review
Programming Languages and Compilers
Software Engineering
spellingShingle Continuous integration
Pull request
Delivery time
Code review
Programming Languages and Compilers
Software Engineering
BERNARDO, João Helis
DA COSTA, Daniel Alencar
KULESZA, Uirá
TREUDE, Christoph
The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests
description Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development practice that builds and tests software frequently (e.g., at every push). One main motivator to adopt CI is the potential to deliver software functionalities more quickly than not using CI. However, there is little empirical evidence to support that CI helps projects deliver software functionalities more quickly. Through the analysis of 162,653 pull requests (PRs) of 87 GitHub projects, we empirically study whether adopting a CI service (TRAVISCI) can quicken the time to deliver merged PRs. We complement our quantitative study by analyzing 450 survey responses from participants of 73 software projects. Our results reveal that adopting a CI service may not necessarily quicken the delivery of merge PRs. Instead, the pivotal benefit of a CI service is to improve the decision making on PR submissions, without compromising the quality or overloading the project’s reviewers and maintainers. The automation provided by CI and the boost in developers’ confidence are key advantages of adopting a CI service. Furthermore, open-source projects planning to attract and retain developers should consider the use of a CI service in their project, since CI is perceived to lower the contribution barrier while making contributors feel more confident and engaged in the project.
format text
author BERNARDO, João Helis
DA COSTA, Daniel Alencar
KULESZA, Uirá
TREUDE, Christoph
author_facet BERNARDO, João Helis
DA COSTA, Daniel Alencar
KULESZA, Uirá
TREUDE, Christoph
author_sort BERNARDO, João Helis
title The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests
title_short The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests
title_full The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests
title_fullStr The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests
title_full_unstemmed The impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests
title_sort impact of a continuous integration service on the delivery time of merged pull requests
publisher Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
publishDate 2023
url https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8769
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9772/viewcontent/joao.pdf
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