Paper Info
Title
One size does not fit all: an empirical study of containerized continuous deployment workflows.
Abstract
Continuous deployment (CD) is a software development practice aimed at automating delivery and deployment of a software product, following any changes to its code. If properly implemented, CD together with other automation in the development process can bring numerous benefits, including higher control and flexibility over release schedules, lower risks, fewer defects, and easier on-boarding of new developers. Here we focus on the (r)evolution in CD workflows caused by containerization, the virtualization technology that enables packaging an application together with all its dependencies and execution environment in a light-weight, self-contained unit, of which Docker has become the de-facto industry standard. There are many available choices for containerized CD workflows, some more appropriate than others for a given project. Owing to cross-listing of GitHub projects on Docker Hub, in this paper we report on a mixed-methods study to shed light on developers' experiences and expectations with containerized CD workflows. Starting from a survey, we explore the motivations, specific workflows, needs, and barriers with containerized CD. We find two prominent workflows, based on the automated builds feature on Docker Hub or continuous integration services, with different trade-offs. We then propose hypotheses and test them in a large-scale quantitative study.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1145/3236024.3236033
ESEC/SIGSOFT FSE
Keywords
Field
DocType
Continuous Deployment,Containerization,Docker,GitHub
Virtualization,Software deployment,Software engineering,Computer science,Real-time computing,Automation,Schedule,Software,Workflow,Empirical research,Software development
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-5573-5
5
0.46
References 
Authors
29
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yang Zhang171.20
Bogdan Vasilescu293548.75
Wang Huaimin31025121.31
Vladimir Filkov4150375.32