pylic 1.2.0

A Python license checker

pylic - Python license checker

Reads the pyproject.toml file and checks all installed licenses recursively.

Principles:

• Every license has to be allowed explicitly (case-insensitive comparison).
• All packages without license are considered unsafe and have to be listed as such.

Installation

pip install pylic

Configuration

pylic needs be run in the directory where your pyproject.toml file is located. You can configure

• safe_licenses: All licenses you concider safe for usage. The string comparison is case-insensitive.
• unsafe_packages: If you rely on a package that does not come with a license you have to explicitly list it as such.

[tool.pylic]
safe_licenses = [
    "Apache Software License",
    "Apache License 2.0",
    "MIT License",
    "Python Software Foundation License",
    "Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0)",
]
unsafe_packages = [
    "unlicensedPackage",
]

Usage Example

Create a venv to start with a clean ground and activate it

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Activate the venv and install pylic and create an empty pyproject.toml

pip install pylic
touch pyproject.toml

Run pylic

pylic

The output will be similar to

Found unsafe packages:
  pkg_resources
Found unsafe licenses:
  pip: MIT License
  zipp: MIT License
  toml: MIT License
  setuptools: MIT License
  importlib-metadata: Apache Software License
  typing-extensions: Python Software Foundation License
  pylic: MIT License

The return code of pylic is in this case non-zero

echo $? # prints 1

As these licenses and packages are all ok we can configure pylic accordingly

cat <<EOT >> pyproject.toml
[tool.pylic]
safe_licenses = ["Apache Software License", "MIT License", "Python Software Foundation License"]
unsafe_packages = ["pkg_resources"]
EOT

The output now reveals a successful validation

All licenses ok

Also the return code now signals that all is good

echo $? # prints 0

Development

Required tools:

• Poetry (https://python-poetry.org/)
• GitHub cli (https://github.com/cli/cli)

Creating a new release is as simple as:

• Update version in the pyproject.toml file.
• poetry run task release vx.x.x.