On the GitHub Actions Language: 260K Workflows Reveal How Construct Usage Impacts Reliability

arXiv·medium signal

Talebzadeh Bardsiri et al. analyze 260,000 GitHub Actions workflows from 49,000 repositories (July 2019 to August 2025), mapping how adoption and evolution of workflow language constructs impacts reliability and maintainability. The study provides the first large-scale empirical evidence linking specific GitHub Actions patterns to workflow failure rates — directly actionable for teams maintaining CI/CD pipelines.