Hansel and Gretel

Tools for detecting and removing anti-patterns in Travis CI specification (.travis.yml) files.

Hansel detects following four anti-patterns:

• Redirecting scripts into interpreters
• Bypassing security checks
• Using irrelevant properties
• Commands unrelated to the phase

Gretel removes the anti-pattern 4 (Commands unrelated to the phase) from .travis.yml files.

This work is published at the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) journal with the title 'Use and Misuse of Continuous Integration Features: An Empirical Study of Projects that (mis)use Travis CI'.

If you use Hansel and Gretel in your work, please cite it as follows:

@article{gallaba2018tse,
    Author = {Keheliya Gallaba and Shane McIntosh},
    Title = {{Use and Misuse of Continuous Integration Features: An Empirical Study of Projects that (mis)use Travis CI}},
    Journal = {IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering ({TSE})},
    year={2020},
    volume={46},
    number={1},
    pages={33--50},
    doi={10.1109/TSE.2018.2838131}
}

• More about this work
• Link to the paper in the IEEE library
• Paper preprint (PDF)

Quick Start

Install the dependencies:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Run all tests to make sure everything is setup properly:

$ python -m unittest discover -v

Run the script on your own .travis.yml file:

$ python hansel_and_gretel.py -p <PATH_TO_TRAVIS_YAML>

Full List of Configuration Options

-h, --help show this help message and exit -p PATH Path to read Travis YAML (default: test/travis_ymls/h0pre.yml) -s SMELLS List of smells to check (e.g. -s 1 2) Note: Checks all by default -f, --fix Set this for fixing the smell -n NEW_PATH Path to write the modified YAML file. Always use with -f -v, --verbose Set this to get more detailed output