An explorative analysis of managed CI/CD usage among open-source C/C++ projects

Abstract

CI/CD is a common practice in software projects today, because it provides a higher level of reliability and safety, especially in the case of dynamically typed script languages. Several studies have examined questions about the effects of using CI/CD pipelines in general. This paper presents, how projects are written primarily in one of the mature C and C++ programming languages adapt to the emerging CI/CD trend. What proportion of these projects are using a CI/CD pipeline? Which managed CI/CD services are typically used in these projects? How early are the CI/CD approach adopted? Is project popularity related to CI/CD adoption rate? Data about 6,000 open-source C/C++ repositories were collected and analysed in this study to answer the aforementioned questions.