Get stats about GitHub actions across all the repos at the ASF

[jnioche]

The stats about GitHub actions can be obtained per repository but given that the ASF has nearly 3K of them, aggregating them is not very straightforward.
The same stats can be obtained at the org level, e.g. for the last 30 days. It is possible to download the report as a csv

Why these stats? I think it would be great to be able to estimate the environmental impact of running GH workflows. The default runners provided by GH are located in the US, where the electricity grid is relatively carbon intensive compared to other locations due to the energy mix (see ElectricityMaps for a live view).

Longer term this could be improved by having ASF supported runners in cleaner locations like Canada or Sweden, like https://carbonrunner.io do.

Estimating the current emissions as a baseline would be a great initial step. I'd be happy to help with the data and methodology but need the stats across the ASF.

It would be good to make this information available to individual projects to raise awareness (and as a motivation to reduce usage in general), maybe as part of [https://infra-reports.apache.org/#ghactions].

[sebbASF]

Agreed, I suspect there are a lot of workflows that could be reduced in frequency or made more efficient.

It would be interesting to see which projects used the most resources.
This would need to be scaled to project size in some way.
A very crude measure might be file count.
This might be suitable for a Summer of Code task?

[jnioche]

This is a typical case of GreenOps coming to the rescue of FinOps: engineers don't care about the cost (especially if someone else is paying) but they do care about the impacts.

It would be interesting to see which projects used the most resources.

One option is to write a script to extract the stats for each GH repo at the ASF but given that the same info is available from the metrics usage page this would be an easier way.

A very crude measure might be file count.

do you mean as a way of normalising the co2 emissions per project e.g. project X generates N grams of Co2eq every month per 1K lines of code?

[raboof]

I agree it's good to give projects insight into the resources they use, and motivate them to reduce that (within reason).

As you mention https://infra-reports.apache.org/#ghactions already exposes this information for the projects you're part of (AFAIK). I kind of fear that if we'd provide this information across all projects, any project that's not in the top-5 will look at it and go "ah no problem then", which I'm not sure is what we want...

[jnioche]

There would be more than one way to report the stats about emissions: per project in infra reports but also elsewhere with the global stats across the ASF + top N emitters.

[sebbASF]

Rather than rank the projects in strict order, maybe it would be possible to rank them in general terms.
Something like: acceptable resource usage, above average, high, excessive

These categories would need to be refined as time goes on.

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As to the infra-reports data, at present I don't find it useful.
For example I am in Commons, Httpd, OpenOffice, Comdev.
The display shows Commons uses 97% of the total.
However the other projects make very little use of GHA.
Also the display gives no indication how my projects relate to others.

[jnioche]

thanks for your comments @sebbASF and @raboof

I'd like to have a go at estimating the emissions . Do you know who would be able to access the reports from the URL above to get the stats at org level? Would save me having to write a scraper.

Would be interesting to compare with the figures from eco-ci

There are 2 tracks from there:

• how to share the data effectively to have maximum impact and drive a reduction in usage
• offer alternative runners in low carbon regions

[sebbASF]

There is another track: how to use actions efficiently. It would be useful to gather some best practice here.
For example, how to eliminate wasted runs (e.g. a syntax error which will cause all runs to fail); which versions to target, run frequency. etc.

[jnioche]

I opened a ticket for infra to get access to the global stats

A quick estimate gave me the following figures, just to put things in perspective.

Apache Tika - 30 days of GH actions
minutes 16749
Wh 1204.72
gCo2eq 424.69

now Apache Superset, which I think has the top number of stars on GH
816,350 minutes over last 30 days
816,350/60*4.315665 => 58,718Wh
20.7kg Co2eq / month

A quick breakdown of the coefficients:

• average carbon intensity of 352g Co2eq per kWh
• standard runner on an Azure d4as_v4, which at 50% load uses 4.315665 wh according to Boavizta

There would be more things to add to it like PUE etc... and compare with other sources but this is just to give a rough estimate.
Please don't quote me and go to deeply into the methodology at this stage, these are ballpark figures.

20kg a month (i.e eq drive 160km in an average petrol car) probably does not seem that much but over a whole year and across the whole ASF estate, we would be getting a pretty substantial impact.

Yes, these minutes do not cost anything to the ASF (being in public repos and on standard runners) but they have an environmental impact. The good news is that we can do something about it.