Abstract

Discussions is a new feature of GitHub for asking questions or discussing topics outside of specific Issues or Pull Requests. Before being available to all projects in December 2020, it had been tested on selected open source software projects. To understand how developers use this novel feature, how they perceive it, and how it impacts the development processes, we conducted a mixed-methods study based on early adopters of GitHub discussions from January until July 2020. We found that: (1) errors, unexpected behavior, and code reviews are prevalent discussion categories; (2) there is a positive relationship between project member involvement and discussion frequency; (3) developers consider GitHub Discussions useful but face the problem of topic duplication between Discussions and Issues; (4) Discussions play a crucial role in advancing the development of projects; and (5) positive sentiment in Discussions is more frequent than in Stack Overflow posts. Our findings are a first step towards data-informed guidance for using GitHub Discussions, opening up avenues for future work on this novel communication channel.

Details

Title
GitHub Discussions: An exploratory study of early adoption
Author
Hata Hideaki 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Novielli Nicole 2 ; Baltes, Sebastian 3 ; Kula, Raula Gaikovina 4 ; Treude Christoph 5 

1  Shinshu University, Nagano, Japan (GRID:grid.263518.b) (ISNI:0000 0001 1507 4692) 
2  University of Bari, Bari, Italy (GRID:grid.7644.1) (ISNI:0000 0001 0120 3326) 
3  University of Adelaide, QAware GmbH, Adelaide, Australia (GRID:grid.1010.0) (ISNI:0000 0004 1936 7304) 
4  Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Japan (GRID:grid.260493.a) (ISNI:0000 0000 9227 2257) 
5  University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia (GRID:grid.1008.9) (ISNI:0000 0001 2179 088X) 
Publication year
2022
Publication date
Jan 2022
Publisher
Springer Nature B.V.
ISSN
13823256
e-ISSN
15737616
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10058-6
ProQuest document ID
2584639840
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.