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Q001 — Comprehensive CI Gate Adoption Rates in OSS — Low

Contents

Summary

Query: What fraction of open source projects on GitHub enforce comprehensive CI gate tooling — specifically static analysis (SAST), dependency/vulnerability scanning (SCA), container image scanning, strict type checking, and code coverage thresholds — as required checks on every commit or pull request? How does adoption vary by project size, programming language ecosystem, and whether the project is backed by a foundation or company versus community-maintained?

Bottom Line: The fraction of OSS projects enforcing comprehensive CI gate tooling is unmeasured but almost certainly very small (likely single-digit percentages). Dependency update tools show the highest adoption (Dependabot 69.2%, Renovate 21.0% in GHA workflows), but these primarily update Action versions, not scan for vulnerabilities. SAST adoption is poorly quantified and appears low. Container scanning, type checking enforcement, and coverage threshold enforcement are essentially unquantified for the OSS ecosystem. No study measures co-adoption of all five tool categories simultaneously.

Results

Artifact Description
Input Original text, clarification, scope, vocabulary
Assessment Evidence synthesis, probability assessment, gaps
Self-Audit Process audit across 4 ROBIS domains
Reading List Prioritized source list

Searches

ID Target Returned Selected
S01 Overall SAST adoption in open source CI pipelines 0 0
S02 SCA and dependency scanning adoption in open source CI ? ?
S03 Code coverage, container scanning, and type checking enforce ? ?
S04 Comprehensive CI gate adoption — all tools simultaneously ? ?
S05 Adoption variation by project size, language, and governance ? ?
S06 Overall SAST adoption in open source CI pipelines 0 0

Sources

ID Title Reliability Relevance
SRC001 https://mir.cs.illinois.edu/marinov/publications/HiltonETAL1 High High
SRC002 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.14572v3 High High
SRC003 https://www.blackduck.com/blog/open-source-trends-ossra-repo High High
SRC004 https://www.scworld.com/news/open-source-vulnerabilities-per Medium High
SRC005 https://www.sonatype.com/state-of-the-software-supply-chain/ High High
SRC006 https://www.sonatype.com/press-releases/sonatypes-10th-annua High High
SRC007 https://www.chainguard.dev/unchained/wolfis-upstream-securit Medium High
SRC008 https://github.com/ossf/scorecard High High
SRC009 https://blog.jetbrains.com/teamcity/2025/10/the-state-of-cic Medium Medium
SRC010 https://arxiv.org/html/2409.07669v2 High High
SRC011 https://www.pixee.ai/blog/sast-false-positives-reduction Medium High
SRC012 https://thenewstack.io/checking-linuxs-code-with-static-anal High High
SRC013 https://www.sonatype.com/state-of-the-software-supply-chain/ High High

Evidence Snapshot

Dimension Rating
Evidence quality Limited
Source agreement Low

Revisit Triggers

  • [study] A mining study analyzing GitHub Actions workflows for co-presence of SAST, SCA, container scanning, and other security tools is published.
  • [data_update] GitHub publishes data on CodeQL, Dependabot security alert, or secret scanning adoption rates.
  • [data_update] OpenSSF Scorecard publishes aggregate pass/fail rates for individual checks across their 1M project dataset.
  • [organization] CNCF, Apache Foundation, or Linux Foundation publishes CI security tooling adoption data for their member projects.

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