An Empirical Study of the Evolution of GitHub Actions Workflows

This repository provides a replication package study related to over 3.4 million versions of GitHub Actions workflow files, extracted from 267,000+ workflow change histories across 49,000+ GitHub repositories between November 2019 and August 2025. This replication package,  created by the Software Engineering Lab at the University of Mons, accompanies the journal paper titled "An Empirical Study of the Evolution of GitHub Actions Workflows" published in the Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software (JSS) in 2026 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2026.112824).

In this replication package, each workflow change is tracked with metadata such as the file path, commit timestamp, and commit author, along with fine-grained diffs between workflow file versions. It also includes an analysis of how workflows evolve over time, including conceptual change types, frequency of changes, and the adoption of automation tools such as Dependabot and Renovate.

This research was conducted with support from ARC-21/25 UMONS3 Action de Recherche Concertée funded by the Ministère de la Communauté française – Direction générale de l’Enseignement non obligatoire et de la Recherche scientifique and The Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS under grant numbers T.0149.22, F.4515.23 and J.0147.24.

For more details, please refer to the full publication.