Support for .yaml file endings

[hanna-modica]

ORT does not detect files with .yaml as ending (e.g. .ort.yaml). According to YAML FAQs [1] it is the preferred official file ending. Supporting it would mean less chances for errors.

[1] https://yaml.org/faq.html

[sschuberth]

If we did this for .ort.yml, we'd consequently need to do it for a bunch of other files like config.yml, too. It also raises the question what to do if both .ort.ymland .ort.yaml are present. Thus, personally I currently have a tendency to not support this.

[tsteenbe]

I remember us having a discussion about this, although the spec preferred file ending is.yaml the community especially within CI/CD tools choose to standardize .yml file ending see:

Examples:

• GitHub actions supports .yml or .yaml, however GitHub itself only uses .yml see e.g. https://github.com/actions/upload-artifact
• GitLab: .gitlab-ci.yml only see https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/gitlab_ci_yaml.html

[bjoern-arnold]

As I raised the topic initially I just wanted to say that I understand your points. The issue was, that we didn't realize that the ort file we provided was not recognized by the tool at all (because of the wrong file suffix). Probably it would be sufficient to explicitly mention this in the documentation and/or log a warning if no ort file was found.

[sschuberth]

Probably it would be sufficient to explicitly mention this in the documentation

Isn't https://github.com/oss-review-toolkit/ort#repository-configuration-file sufficient / explicit enough?

[tsteenbe]

I believe it may be useful to add a check for *.ort.yaml files during a project scan which throws a technical issue with a how-to-fix explaining to the use .yml is the extension to use with a reference to https://github.com/oss-review-toolkit/ort/blob/main/docs/config-file-ort-yml.md

@hanna-modica @bjoern-arnold Would this would for you both? Let us know so we can update this issue accordingly.

[sschuberth]

I believe it may be useful to add a check for *.ort.yaml files during a project scan which throws a technical issue with a how-to-fix

However, the effort to implement this would be pretty much the same as do supporting *.ort.yaml...

[hanna-modica]

However, the effort to implement this would be pretty much the same as do supporting *.ort.yaml...

At least it would remove the overhead to add this file ending support to all the other files. What is you opinion @bjoern-arnold?

[bjoern-arnold]

I believe it may be useful to add a check for *.ort.yaml files during a project scan which throws a technical issue with a how-to-fix explaining to the use .yml is the extension to use with a reference to https://github.com/oss-review-toolkit/ort/blob/main/docs/config-file-ort-yml.md

Yes, that sounds good. Probably it would even be better to scan for the absence of "*.ort.yml" and report a warning if it does not exist, together with a reference to the documentation. Assuming that virtually any project requires a project specific configuration file, of course.

[tsteenbe]

Discussed in the ORT community call of April 27th

1. Agreed to add a warning
2. Would like to have warning for parsing issues with .ort.yml file

[sschuberth]

Closed as part of backlog grooming. Feel free to comment if you would like to contribute to this.

[sschuberth]

Note that

ort/model/src/main/kotlin/FileFormat.kt

Lines 41 to 44 in bca9748

	/**
	* Specifies the [YAML](http://yaml.org/) format.
	*/
	YAML(yamlMapper, "yml", "yaml");

already knows how to treat .yaml file extensions. So if you really want to use them, you could use the varous CLI options for specifying files, like --config, to point to a .yaml file.