LicenseCheck
NOTICE: I am not a lawyer (IANAL)
Any output provided by this software is for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. I am not a lawyer and there is no guarantee that the information provided here is complete or correct. Any reliance on the information provided by this software is at your own risk.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL, project license (MIT)
Output the licences used by dependencies and check if these are compatible with the project license
Table of Contents
- Examples from the command-line
- Help
- Configuration Example
- Documentation
- Install With PIP
- Language information
- Install Python on Windows
- Install Python on Linux
- Install Python on MacOS
- How to run
- Building
- Testing
- Download Project
- Community Files
Examples from the command-line
See below for the output if you run licensecheck in this directory
>> licensecheck
list of packages
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Compatible ┃ Package ┃ License(s) ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ✔ │ urllib3 │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ types-setuptools │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ tomli │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ idna │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ Pygments │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ certifi │ Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) │
│ ✔ │ fhconfparser │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ rich │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ charset-normalizer │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ requirements-parser │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ commonmark │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ requests │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ attrs │ MIT License │
└────────────┴─────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘Using requirements
>> licensecheck -u requirements
list of packages
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Compatible ┃ Package ┃ License(s) ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ✔ │ requirements-parser │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ requests │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ rich │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ fhconfparser │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ tomli │ MIT License │
└────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┘Failing on packages under MIT license
>> licensecheck --fail-licenses mit
list of packages
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Compatible ┃ Package ┃ License(s) ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ✔ │ idna │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ certifi │ Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) │
│ ✔ │ Pygments │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ commonmark │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ requirements-parser │ Apache Software License │
│ ✖ │ fhconfparser │ MIT License │
│ ✖ │ tomli │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ types-setuptools │ Apache Software License │
│ ✖ │ attrs │ MIT License │
│ ✖ │ charset-normalizer │ MIT License │
│ ✖ │ rich │ MIT License │
│ ✖ │ urllib3 │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ requests │ Apache Software License │
└────────────┴─────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘Only allow a predefined set of licenses
>> licensecheck --only-licenses mit
list of packages
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Compatible ┃ Package ┃ License(s) ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ✖ │ idna │ BSD License │
│ ✖ │ certifi │ Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) │
│ ✖ │ Pygments │ BSD License │
│ ✖ │ commonmark │ BSD License │
│ ✖ │ requirements-parser │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ fhconfparser │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ tomli │ MIT License │
│ ✖ │ types-setuptools │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ attrs │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ charset-normalizer │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ rich │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ urllib3 │ MIT License │
│ ✖ │ requests │ Apache Software License │
└────────────┴─────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘Custom requirements.txt in json format
Add optional path to requirements.txt as outlined in https://github.com/FHPythonUtils/LicenseCheck/issues/9#issuecomment-898878228. Eg. licensecheck --using requirements:c:/path/to/reqs.txt;path/to/other/reqs.txt
>> licensecheck -u 'requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt' -f json
{
"info": {
"program": "licensecheck",
"version": "2022.2.0"
},
"packages": [
{
"name": "requests",
"version": "2.28.1",
"namever": "requests-2.28.1",
"size": 180253,
"homePage": "https://requests.readthedocs.io",
"author": "Kenneth Reitz",
"license": "Apache Software License",
"licenseCompat": true,
"errorCode": 0
},
{
"name": "rich",
"version": "12.6.0",
"namever": "rich-12.6.0",
"size": 905975,
"homePage": "https://github.com/willmcgugan/rich",
"author": "Will McGugan",
"license": "MIT License",
"licenseCompat": true,
"errorCode": 0
},
{
"name": "tomli",
"version": "2.0.1",
"namever": "tomli-2.0.1",
"size": 26252,
"homePage": "UNKNOWN",
"author": "UNKNOWN",
"license": "MIT License",
"licenseCompat": true,
"errorCode": 0
},
{
"name": "requirements-parser",
"version": "0.5.0",
"namever": "requirements-parser-0.5.0",
"size": 11523,
"homePage": "https://github.com/madpah/requirements-parser",
"author": "Paul Horton",
"license": "Apache Software License",
"licenseCompat": true,
"errorCode": 0
},
{
"name": "fhconfparser",
"version": "2022",
"namever": "fhconfparser-2022",
"size": 14586,
"homePage": "https://github.com/FHPythonUtils/FHConfParser",
"author": "FredHappyface",
"license": "MIT License",
"licenseCompat": true,
"errorCode": 0
}
]
}Poetry with dev requirements
Add -u poetry:dev to command-line to include dev packages (excluded by default)
>> licensecheck -u poetry:dev
list of packages
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Compatible ┃ Package ┃ License(s) ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ✔ │ astroid │ GNU Lesser General Public License v2 (LGPLv2) │
│ ✔ │ rich │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ types-setuptools │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ fhconfparser │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ typed-ast │ Apache License 2.0 │
│ ✔ │ py │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ mccabe │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ tomlkit │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ coverage │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ Pygments │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ requests │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ requirements-parser │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ tomli │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ pluggy │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ isort │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ urllib3 │ MIT License │
│ ✖ │ pylint │ GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2) │
│ ✔ │ iniconfig │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ wrapt │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ pytest │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ pip │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ charset-normalizer │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ packaging │ Apache Software License, BSD License │
│ ✔ │ commonmark │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ lazy-object-proxy │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ platformdirs │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ certifi │ Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) │
│ ✔ │ colorama │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ attrs │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ dill │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ idna │ BSD License │
│ ✔ │ importlib-resources │ Apache Software License │
│ ✔ │ handsdown │ MIT License │
│ ✔ │ pyparsing │ MIT License │
└────────────┴─────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘PEP 631 (with or without optional dependencies)
PEP 631 mode enables support for reading dependency information from pyproject.toml in the format specified by PEP 631.
This format is used by build systems such as hatch.
You can enable this mode by using -u PEP631, and include the optional dependencies of extras by using -u PEP631:tests;dev;docs,
but it's recommended to use this instead:
[tool.licensecheck]
using = "PEP631"
# OR
[tool.licensecheck]
using = "PEP631:tests;dev;docs"By default no optional dependencies are included.
Help
usage: __main__.py [-h] [--format FORMAT] [--file FILE] [--using USING]
[--ignore-packages IGNORE_PACKAGES [IGNORE_PACKAGES ...]]
[--fail-packages FAIL_PACKAGES [FAIL_PACKAGES ...]]
[--ignore-licenses IGNORE_LICENSES [IGNORE_LICENSES ...]]
[--fail-licenses FAIL_LICENSES [FAIL_LICENSES ...]]
[--only_licenses ONLY_LICENSES [ONLY_LICENSES ...]] [--zero]
Output the licenses used by dependencies and check if these are compatible with the project license.
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--format FORMAT, -f FORMAT
Output format. one of: json, markdown, csv, ansi, simple. default=simple
--file FILE, -o FILE Filename to write to (omit for stdout)
--using USING, -u USING
Environment to use e.g. requirements.txt. one of: requirements, poetry, PEP631. default=poetry
--ignore-packages IGNORE_PACKAGES [IGNORE_PACKAGES ...]
a list of packages to ignore (compat=True)
--fail-packages FAIL_PACKAGES [FAIL_PACKAGES ...]
a list of packages to fail (compat=False)
--ignore-licenses IGNORE_LICENSES [IGNORE_LICENSES ...]
a list of licenses to ignore (skipped, compat may still be False)
--fail-licenses FAIL_LICENSES [FAIL_LICENSES ...]
a list of licenses to fail (compat=False)
--only-licenses ONLY_LICENSES [ONLY_LICENSES ...]
a list of allowed licenses (any other license will fail)
--skip-dependencies SKIP_DEPENDENCIES [SKIP_DEPENDENCIES ...]
a list of dependencies to skip (compat=False)
--zero, -0 Return non zero exit code if an incompatible license is foundYou can also import this into your own project and use any of the functions in the DOCS
Configuration Example
Configuration files are parsed in the following order: pyproject.toml,
setup.cfg, licensecheck.toml, licensecheck.json, licensecheck.ini,
~/licensecheck.toml, ~/licensecheck.json, ~/licensecheck.ini
- ⚠ All config files are parsed, however configuration defined in previous files takes precedent
Add optional path to requirements.txt as outlined in
https://github.com/FHPythonUtils/LicenseCheck/issues/9#issuecomment-898878228
for example: licensecheck --using requirements:c:/path/to/reqs.txt;path/to/other/reqs.txt
Example 1: pyproject.toml
The following config is equivalent to licensecheck -u 'requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt' -f json
[tool.licensecheck]
using = "requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt"
format = "json"Example 2: licensecheck.json
The following config is equivalent to licensecheck -u 'requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt' -f json
{
"tool": {
"licensecheck": {
"using": "requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt",
"format": "json"
}
}
}Example 3: licensecheck.ini
The following config is equivalent to licensecheck -u 'requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt' -f json
[licensecheck]
using = "requirements:requirements.txt;requirements_optional.txt"
format = "json"Documentation
A high-level overview of how the documentation is organized organized will help you know where to look for certain things:
- The Technical Reference documents APIs and other aspects of the machinery. This documentation describes how to use the classes and functions at a lower level and assume that you have a good high-level understanding of the software.