HackRep: A Large-Scale Dataset of GitHub Hackathon Projects

TL;DR

HackRep is a comprehensive dataset of over 100,000 GitHub repositories from hackathons, enabling large-scale analysis of hackathon projects, team dynamics, and geographic patterns.

Contribution

The paper introduces HackRep, the largest dataset of hackathon GitHub repositories, facilitating new research opportunities in software engineering and hackathon analysis.

Findings

HackRep enables estimation of hackathon durations from commit data.

Preliminary analysis shows patterns in team composition and project continuation.

The dataset supports studying geographic distribution of hackathon projects.

Abstract

Hackathons are time-bound collaborative events that often target software creation. Although hackathons have been studied in the past, existing work focused on in-depth case studies limiting our understanding of hackathons as a software engineering activity. To complement the existing body of knowledge, we introduce HackRep, a dataset of 100,356 hackathon GitHub repositories. We illustrate the ways HackRep can benefit software engineering researchers by presenting a preliminary investigation of hackathon project continuation, hackathon team composition, and an estimation of hackathon geography. We further display the opportunities of using this dataset, for instance showing the possibility of estimating hackathon durations based on commit timestamps.