Why are there no build system plugins for ORT?

[sschuberth]

Several similar tools offer plugins for the various build systems. Why does ORT not?

[sschuberth]

The ORT analyzer was specifically designed to inspect projects from the outside, ideally without the need to build the project or even install any project dependencies (which unfortunately is not possible with all package managers), for several reasons:

• No effort for project development teams to change their build systems
• No "vendor" lock-in
• Projects over which you have no control (to add a build system plugin) can be analyzed
• Projects that have no real build system can be analyzed (with the help of SPDX files)
• There is no risk that project development team use outdated versions of such build system plugins