Developers’ Perception of GitHub Actions: A Survey Analysis

GitHub Actions is a powerful tool for automating workflows on GitHub repositories, with thousands of Actions currently available on the GitHub Marketplace. So far, the research community has conducted mining studies on Actions, with much of the focus on CI/CD. However, the motivation and best practices of developers for using, developing, and debugging Actions are unknown. To address this gap, we conducted a survey study with 90 Action users and developers. Our findings indicate that developers prefer Actions with verified creators and more stars when choosing between similar Actions, and often switch to alternative Actions when faced with bugs or a lack of documentation. We also found that developers find the composition of YAML files, which are essential for Action integration, challenging and error-prone. They primarily rely on Q&A forums to fix issues with these YAML files. Finally, we observed that developers would not likely adopt Actions when there are concerns around complexity and security risks. Our study summarizes developers’ perceptions, decision-making process, and challenges in using, developing, and debugging Actions. We provide recommendations for improving the visibility, re-usability, documentation, and support surrounding GitHub Actions.