licensecheck 2024

Output the licenses used by dependencies and check if these are compatible with the project license

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
  • Using requirements
  • Failing on packages under MIT license
  • Custom requirements.txt in json format
  • Poetry with dev requirements
  • PEP 631 (with or without optional dependencies)
• Help
• Configuration Example
  • Example 1: pyproject.toml
  • Example 2: licensecheck.json
  • Example 3: licensecheck.ini
• Documentation
• Install With PIP
• Language information
  • Built for
• Install Python on Windows
  • Chocolatey
  • Windows - Python.org
• Install Python on Linux
  • Apt
  • Dnf
• Install Python on MacOS
  • Homebrew
  • MacOS - Python.org
• How to run
  • Windows
  • Linux/ MacOS
• Building
• Testing
• Download Project
  • Clone
    • Using The Command Line
    • Using GitHub Desktop
  • Download Zip File
• Community Files
  • Licence
  • Changelog
  • Code of Conduct
  • Contributing
  • Security
  • Support
  • Rationale

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              │
└────────────┴─────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘

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 ...]] [--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)
  --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 found

You 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.

Install With PIP

pip install licensecheck

Head to https://pypi.org/project/licensecheck/ for more info

Language information

Built for

This program has been written for Python versions 3.8 - 3.11 and has been tested with both 3.8 and 3.11

Install Python on Windows

Chocolatey

choco install python

Windows - Python.org

To install Python, go to https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/ and download the latest version.

Install Python on Linux

Apt

sudo apt install python3.x

Dnf

sudo dnf install python3.x

Install Python on MacOS

Homebrew

brew install python@3.x

MacOS - Python.org

To install Python, go to https://www.python.org/downloads/macos/ and download the latest version.

How to run

Windows

• Module py -3.x -m [module] or [module] (if module installs a script)

• File py -3.x [file] or ./[file]

Linux/ MacOS

• Module python3.x -m [module] or [module] (if module installs a script)

• File python3.x [file] or ./[file]

Building

This project uses https://github.com/FHPythonUtils/FHMake to automate most of the building. This command generates the documentation, updates the requirements.txt and builds the library artefacts

Note the functionality provided by fhmake can be approximated by the following

handsdown  --cleanup -o documentation/reference
poetry export -f requirements.txt --output requirements.txt
poetry export -f requirements.txt --with dev --output requirements_optional.txt
poetry build

fhmake audit can be run to perform additional checks

Testing

For testing with the version of python used by poetry use

poetry run pytest

Alternatively use tox to run tests over python 3.8 - 3.11

tox

Download Project

Clone

Using The Command Line

1. Press the Clone or download button in the top right
2. Copy the URL (link)
3. Open the command line and change directory to where you wish to clone to
4. Type 'git clone' followed by URL in step 2

   git clone https://github.com/FHPythonUtils/LicenseCheck
   

More information can be found at https://help.github.com/en/articles/cloning-a-repository

Using GitHub Desktop

1. Press the Clone or download button in the top right
2. Click open in desktop
3. Choose the path for where you want and click Clone

More information can be found at https://help.github.com/en/desktop/contributing-to-projects/cloning-a-repository-from-github-to-github-desktop

Download Zip File

1. Download this GitHub repository
2. Extract the zip archive
3. Copy/ move to the desired location

Community Files

Licence

MIT License Copyright (c) FredHappyface (See the LICENSE for more information.)

Changelog

See the Changelog for more information.

Code of Conduct

Online communities include people from many backgrounds. The Project contributors are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all. Please see the Code of Conduct for more information.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, please see the Contributing Guidelines for more information.

Security

Thank you for improving the security of the project, please see the Security Policy for more information.

Support

Thank you for using this project, I hope it is of use to you. Please be aware that those involved with the project often do so for fun along with other commitments (such as work, family, etc). Please see the Support Policy for more information.

Rationale

The rationale acts as a guide to various processes regarding projects such as the versioning scheme and the programming styles used. Please see the Rationale for more information.