A dataset of GitHub Actions workflow histories

This is a replication package for the dataset and exploratory empirical analysis reported in the paper "A dataset of GitHub Actions workflow histories" submitted to the MSR 2024 conference. The Jupyter notebook Exploratory_Analysis.ipynb requires Python 3.11.6 and some dependencies that are listed in the notebook and in the file "requirements_notebook.txt". "workflows.tar.gz" contains the dataset of GitHub Actions workflow file histories. "repositories.csv.gz" contains metadata about the GitHub repositories containing the workflow files. This metadata was extracted using the SEART GitHub Search tool. "workflows.csv.gz" contains the metadata for the extracted workflow files. The metadata is separated in different columns: `repository`: The repository (author and repository name) from which the workflow was extracted. The separator "---" allows to distinguish between the author and the repository name. `commit_hash`: The commit hash returned by git `author_name`: The name of the author that changed this file `author_email`: The email of the author that changed this file `committer_name`: The name of the committer `committer_email`: The email of the committer `committed_date`: The committed date of the commit `authored_date`: The authored date of the commit `file_path`: The path to this file in the repository `file_hash`: The name of the related workflow file in the dataset `change_type`: A single letter (A,D or M) representing the type of change made to the workflow (Added, Deleted or Modified) `is_workflow`: Boolean flag following aforementioned heuristic. "rename.csv.gz" contains the metadata for renamed files in the dataset. This metadata consists of the following columons: `repository`: The repository (author and repository name) from which the workflow was extracted. The separator "---" allows to distinguish between the author and the repository name. `commit`: The commit hash referring to the commit in which the file was renamed `old_name`: The name of the file before the renaming `new_name`: The name of the file after the renaming