Are projects using GitHub checks having continuous integration?

I am doing data analysis on GitHub projects and I want to filter projects having continuous integration (on GitHub).

There are two types of checks and statuses on GitHub: Checks and Statuses! Projects can use GitHub Apps to run checks or mark their commits with external services (CI or other) [source]. My question here is: does having GitHub Checks (or statuses) results available for a project mean that the project is using CI for sure? If not what other factors should be presented to say a project is having continuous integration?

Solution 1:

Possibly. But you can't be sure. It means that some check runs and some status is updated. But without looking at the automation, there is no way to conclude that Continuous integration takes place.

Maybe it checks whether the contributor has signed a contribution agreement. Maybe it checks for the presence of a Issue id or an attachment. Maybe it updated some external system (like Service Now) so the issue can be tracked there as well...

Checks and statuses are used in many different ways.

And Continuous Integration looks different for different technologies. Some languages need to be compiled, others won't need that. They'd hopefully have some kind of tests to validate nothing broke during integration, but there is no surefire way to know as it may simply be running a script or using a test framework or something else.

You can probably easily conclude that the absence of checks and statuses likely means that CI isn't being performed (even that can't be said with 100% certainty as an external system may be performing the CI, just not reporting back the status). The presence if checks and statuses means that something happens. But you likely need to dig a bit deeper to classify whether the thing that happens constitutes to CI.