Build status
- Ruby 2.7.8
- Ruby 3.1.4
- Ruby 3.2.3
- Ruby 3.3.0
LicenseFinder works with your package managers to find dependencies, detect the licenses of the packages in them, compare those licenses against a user-defined list of permitted licenses, and give you an actionable exception report.
- code: https://github.com/pivotal/LicenseFinder
- ci: https://norsk.cf-app.com/teams/main/pipelines/LicenseFinder
- docker: licensefinder/license_finder
- the docker image contains all the package managers needed to run
license_finder
- the docker image contains all the package managers needed to run
- support:
- The primary form of communication for support is through github issues. The google groups are not actively monitored
- [email protected]
- https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/license-finder
| Project Type | Package Manager | Tested on Version |
|---|---|---|
| Ruby Gems | bundler | 2.3.7 |
| Python 2.7 Eggs | pip2 | 19.0.2 |
| Python 3.5 Eggs | pip3 | 20.0.2 |
| Node.js | npm | 6.4.1 |
| Bower | bower | 1.8.4 |
| Nuget (without license discovery) | nuget | 4.7.1.5393 |
| Godep | Godep | 80 |
| Go workspace | Go lang | 1.11.5 |
| Go modules | Go lang | 1.14.3 |
| Java | maven | 3.6.0 |
| Java | gradle | 5.6.4 |
- Erlang (via
rebarandErlang.mk) - Objective-C, Swift (via Carthage, CocoaPods [0.39 and below. See CocoaPods Specs Repo Sharding]) and Swift Package Manager(SPM)
- Elixir (via
mix) - Golang (via
gvt,glide,dep,trashandgovendor) - JavaScript (via
yarn) - C++/C (via
conan) - Scala (via
sbt) - Rust (via
cargo) - PHP (via
composer) - Python (via
Conda,pipenv) - Flutter (via
flutter pub)
License Finder may be run as a pre-commit hook by
adding the following to your .pre-commit-config.yaml:
repos:
- repo: https://github.com/pivotal/LicenseFinder
rev: v7.1.0 # You probably want the latest tag.
hooks:
- id: license-finderRunning License Finder directly requires Ruby 2.6.0 or greater. If you have an older version of Ruby installed, you can update via Homebrew:
$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"then:
$ brew install rubyThe easiest way to use license_finder directly is to install it as a command
line tool, like brew, awk, gem or bundler:
$ gem install license_finderThough it's less preferable, if you are using bundler in a Ruby
project, you can add license_finder to your Gemfile:
gem 'license_finder', :group => :developmentThis approach helps you remember to install license_finder, but can
pull in unwanted dependencies, including bundler. To mitigate this
problem, see Excluding Dependencies.
Make sure your dependencies are installed (with your package manager's install command: bundle install, npm install, etc.)
The first time you run license_finder it will list all your project's packages.
$ license_finderOr, if you installed with bundler:
$ bundle exec license_finderThe output will report that none of your packages have been
approved. Over time you will tell license_finder which packages
are approved, so when you run this command in the future, it will
report current action items; i.e., packages that are new or have
never been approved.
If you don't wish to see progressive output "dots", use the --quiet
option.
If you'd like to see debugging output, use the --debug
option. license_finder will then output info about packages, their
dependencies, and where and how each license was discovered. This can
be useful when you need to track down an unexpected package or
license.
If you do not want to manually run an individual package manager's prepare
command (ex: bundle install, npm install, etc) to ensure your project
is fully prepared to be scanned, use the --prepare or -p option which will run
each active package manager's prepare command for you. If you would like to continue
running license_finder even if there is an issue with a prepare step, use the
--prepare-no-fail option which prepares but carries on despite any potential failures.
Run license_finder help to see other available commands, and
license_finder help [COMMAND] for detailed help on a specific
command.
If you have docker installed, try using the included dlf script (potentially
symlinked to be in your path via ln -s LicenseFinder/dlf /usr/local/bin or
whatever method you prefer). This will run any commands passed to it inside a
pre-provisioned Docker container to maintain consistent versions of all the
package managers. For example,
$ dlf npm --version
5.3.0
$ dlf license_finder --help
Dependencies that need approval:
...
license_finder, 3.0.3, MIT
$ dlf "bundle install && license_finder"
You can better understand the way this script works by looking at its source, but for
reference it will mount your current directory at the path /scan and run any commands
passed to it from that directory. If your command has &&, ensure you quote the command.
If it does not, ensure the command is not quoted.
Note that the docker image will run the gem which is installed within it.
So the docker image tagged 7.0.0 will run License Finder Version 7.0.0
See the contributing guide for information on development.
license_finder will find and include packages for all supported
languages, as long as that language has a package definition in the project directory:
Gemfile(forbundler)requirements.txt(forpip)Pipfile.lock(forpipenv)package.json(fornpm)pom.xml(formaven)build.gradleorbuild.gradle.kts(forgradle)settings.gradlethat specifiesrootProject.buildFileName(forgradle)bower.json(forbower)Podfile(forpod) (setACKNOWLEDGEMENTS_PATHvariable if you want to target a particularPods-acknowledgements-<TARGET>.plist. Can be useful in multi-target pods projects.)Cartfile(forcarthage)workspace-state.jsonunder build directory (provided as enviroment variableSPM_DERIVED_DATAfor Xcode, or default.buildfor non-Xcode projects), (forspm)rebar.config(forrebar)Erlang.mkorerlang.mkfile (forErlang.mk)mix.exs(formix)packages/directory (fornuget)*.csproj(fordotnet)vendor/manifestor*/vendor/manifestfile (forgvt)glide.lockfile (forglide)vendor/vendor.jsonfile (forgovendor)Gopkg.lockfile (fordep)Godeps/Godeps.json(forgodep)*.envrcfile (forgo)go.modfile (forgo mod)vendor.conffile (fortrash)yarn.lockfile (foryarn)conanfile.txtfile (forconan)build.sbtfile (forsbt)Cargo.lockfile (forcargo)composer.lockfile (forcomposer)environment.ymlfile (forconda)pubspec.yaml & .pub cache locaton through ENV variable(forflutter)
license_finder will return a non-zero exit status if there are unapproved
dependencies. This can be useful for inclusion in a CI environment to alert you
if someone adds an unapproved dependency to the project.
license_finder will inform you whenever you have an unapproved dependency.
If your business decides this is an acceptable risk, the easiest way to approve
the dependency is by running license_finder approvals add.
For example, let's assume you've added the awesome_gpl_gem
to your Gemfile, which license_finder reports is unapproved:
$ license_finder
Dependencies that need approval:
awesome_gpl_gem, 1.0.0, GPLYour business tells you that in this case, it's acceptable to use this gem. You now run:
$ license_finder approvals add awesome_gpl_gemIf you rerun license_finder, you should no longer see
awesome_gpl_gem in the output.
To approve specific version
$ license_finder approvals add awesome_gpl_gem --version=1.0.0To record who approved the dependency and why:
$ license_finder approvals add awesome_gpl_gem --who CTO --why "Go ahead"Approving packages one-by-one can be tedious. Usually your business has
blanket policies about which packages are approved. To tell license_finder
that any package with the MIT license should be approved, run:
$ license_finder permitted_licenses add MITAny current or future packages with the MIT license will be excluded from the
output of license_finder.
You can also record --who and --why when changing permitted licenses,
or making any other decision about your project.
Any decisions you make about approvals will be recorded in a YAML file named
doc/dependency_decisions.yml.
This file must be committed to version control. Rarely, you will have to manually resolve conflicts in it. In this situation, keep in mind that each decision has an associated timestamp, and the decisions are processed top-to-bottom, with later decisions overwriting or appending to earlier decisions.
You could expect license_finder, which is an alias for license_finder action_items to output something like the following on a Rails project where
MIT had been permitted:
Dependencies that need approval:
highline, 1.6.14, ruby
json, 1.7.5, ruby
mime-types, 1.19, ruby
rails, 3.2.8, unknown
rdoc, 3.12, unknown
rubyzip, 0.9.9, ruby
xml-simple, 1.1.1, unknown
You can customize the format of the output in the same way that you customize
output from report.
The license_finder project_roots command will output the current working directory as a string in an array.
Using the --recursive option means the array will include subdirectories that contain a known package manager. With the exception that Gradle and Maven subprojects will not be included.
The license_finder report command will output human-readable reports that you
could send to your non-technical business partners, lawyers, etc. You can
choose the format of the report (text, csv, html or markdown); see
license_finder --help report for details. The output is sent to STDOUT, so
you can save the reports wherever you want them. You can commit them to
version control if you like.
The HTML report generated by license_finder report --format html summarizes
all of your project's dependencies and includes information about which need to
be approved. The project name at the top of the report can be set with
license_finder project_name add.
When using the yarn package manager, when a node_module's package.json doesn't explicitly declare a license, yarn indicates that it has inferred the license based on some keywords in other files by appending an asterisk to the license name. If you see a * at the end of the license name, this is intended.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for advice about adding and customizing reports.
When license_finder reports that a dependency's license is 'unknown',
you should manually research what the actual license is. When you
have established the real license, you can record it with:
$ license_finder licenses add my_unknown_dependency MITThis command would assign the MIT license to all versions of the dependency
my_unknown_dependency. If you prefer, you could instead assign the license
to only a specific version of the dependency:
$ license_finder licenses add my_unknown_dependency MIT --version=1.0.0Please note that adding a license to a specific version of a dependency will cause any licenses previously added to all versions of that dependency to be forgotten. Similarly, adding a license to all versions of a dependency will override any licenses previously added to specific versions of that dependency.
There are several ways in which you can remove licenses that were previously
added through the licenses add command:
# Removes all licenses from any version of the dependency
$ license_finder licenses remove my_unknown_dependency
# Removes just the MIT license from any version of the dependency
$ license_finder licenses remove my_unknown_dependency MIT
# Removes all licenses from only version 1.0.0 of the dependency
# This has no effect if you had last added a license to all versions of the dependency
$ license_finder licenses remove my_unknown_dependency --version=1.0.0
# Removes just the MIT license from only version 1.0.0 of the dependency
# This has no effect if you had last added a license to all versions of the dependency
$ license_finder licenses remove my_unknown_dependency MIT --version=1.0.0Adding Hidden Dependencies
license_finder can track dependencies that your package managers
don't know about (JS libraries that don't appear in your
Gemfile/requirements.txt/package.json, etc.)
$ license_finder dependencies add my_js_dep MIT 0.1.2Run license_finder dependencies help for
additional documentation about managing these dependencies.
license_finder cannot automatically detect when one of these
dependencies has been removed from your project, so you can use:
$ license_finder dependencies remove my_js_depSometimes a project will have development or test dependencies which
you don't want to track. You can exclude theses dependencies by running
license_finder ignored_groups. (Currently this only works for packages
managed by Bundler, NPM, Yarn, Maven, Pip2, Pip3, and Nuget.)
On rare occasions a package manager will report an individual dependency
that you want to exclude from all reports, even though it is approved.
You can exclude an individual dependency by running
license_finder ignored_dependencies. Think carefully before adding
dependencies to this list. A likely item to exclude is bundler,
since it is a common dependency whose version changes from machine to
machine. Adding it to the ignored_dependencies would prevent it
(and its oscillating versions) from appearing in reports.
Some projects will have a list of licenses that cannot be used. You can
restrict these licenses with license_finder restricted_licenses add. Any dependency
that has exclusively restricted licenses will always appear in the action
items, even if someone attempts to manually approve or permit it. However,
if a dependency has even one license that is not restricted, it can still be
manually approved or permitted.
Add or remove decision files you want to inherit from - see license_finder inherited_decisions help for more information.
This allows you to have a centralized decision file for approved/restricted licenses. If you have multiple projects it's way easier to have one single place where you approved or restricted licenses defined.
Add one or more decision files to the inherited decisions
license_finder inherited_decisions add DECISION_FILERemove one or more decision files from the inherited decisions
license_finder inherited_decisions remove DECISION_FILEList all the inherited decision files
license_finder inherited_decisions listBe default, license_finder expects the decisions file to be stored at
doc/dependency_decisions.yml. All commands can be passed --decisions_file
to override this location.
If you have a gradle project, you can invoke gradle with a custom script by
passing (for example) --gradle_command gradlew to license_finder or
license_finder report.
Similarly you can invoke a custom rebar script with --rebar_command rebar.
If you store rebar dependencies in a custom directory (by setting deps_dir in
rebar.config), set --rebar_deps_dir.
You can also invoke a custom Mix script remix with --mix_command remix and
set --mix_deps_dir to fetch Mix dependencies from a custom directory.
By default, license_finder will check for all supported package managers,
but you can narrow it down to use only those you pass to --enabled-package-managers.
For example,
$ license_finder --enabled-package-managers bundler npm
It may be difficult to remember to pass command line options to every command.
In some of these cases you can store default values in a YAML formatted config
file. license_finder looks for this file in config/license_finder.yml.
As an example, the file might look like this:
---
decisions_file: './some_path/decisions.yml'
gradle_command: './gradlew'
rebar_command: './rebarw'
rebar_deps_dir: './rebar_deps'
mix_command: './mixw'
mix_deps_dir: './mix_deps'
enabled_package_managers:
- bundler
- gradle
- rebar
- mixlicense_finder supports both Gradle 1.x and Gradle 2.x. You need to have installed
the license-gradle-plugin in your project:
https://github.com/hierynomus/license-gradle-plugin
By default, license_finder will report on Gradle's "runtime" dependencies. If
you want to generate a report for some other dependency configuration (e.g.
Android projects will sometimes specify their meaningful dependencies in the
"compile" group), you can specify it in your project's build.gradle:
// Must come *after* applying the appropriate plugin from [https://github.com/hierynomus/license-gradle-plugin](https://github.com/hierynomus/license-gradle-plugin)
downloadLicenses {
dependencyConfiguration "compile"
}
license_finder supports Conan. You need to have the following lines in your conanfile.txt for license_finder to retrieve dependencies' licenses.
Ensure that conan install does not generate an error.
[imports]
., license* -> ./licenses @ folder=True, ignore_case=True
license_finder supports SBT. You need to have installed the sbt-license-report in your project:
https://github.com/sbt/sbt-license-report
By default, license_finder will report on SBT's "compile" and "test" dependencies. If
you want to generate a report for some other dependency configuration, you can specify
it in your projects's build.sbt
licenseConfigurations := Set("compile", "provided")
license_finder requires ruby >= 2.6.0.
To upgrade to license_finder version >= 6.0, you have to replace the terminology whitelist with permit and blacklist with restrict in your dependency_decisions.yml. See Changelog for more details.
To upgrade from license_finder version 1.2 to 2.0, see
license_finder_upgrade.
To upgrade to 2.0 from a version lower than 1.2, first upgrade to 1.2, and run
license_finder at least once. This will ensure that the license_finder
database is in a state which license_finder_upgrade understands.
Please add a license to your package specs! Most packaging systems allow for the specification of one or more licenses.
For example, Ruby Gems can specify a license by name:
Gem::Specification.new do |s|
s.name = "my_great_gem"
s.license = "MIT"
endAnd save a LICENSE file which contains your license text in your repo.
-
Bundler
- When using
--project-path, Bundler cannot find the Gemfile.
- When using
-
Yarn
- A module that is incompatible with the platform on which license_finder is run will always be reported to have a license type of "unknown". (#456)
- Send an email to the list: [email protected]
- View the project backlog at Pivotal Tracker: https://www.pivotaltracker.com/n/projects/234851
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
LicenseFinder is released under the MIT License. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license
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