Check npm package dependency license metadata and package data from ClearlyDefined against rules. This is based on and extends the functionality of licensee.js (6.1.0) but does not currently support its newer functionality and config format. Experimental, not stable.

Configuration

Accepts the following configuration:

1. a rule about permitted licenses
2. a package whitelist of name-and-range pairs
3. options for comparing package license metadata to file-based information from ClearlyDefined

You can set configuration with command flags or a .licensee.json file at the root of your package, like so:

{
  "license": "(MIT OR BSD-2-Clause OR BSD-3-Clause OR Apache-2.0)",
  "whitelist": {
    "optimist": "<=0.6.1"
  },
  "corrections": false,
  "ignore": [
    { "scope": "kemitchell" },
    { "prefix": "commonform-" },
    { "author": "Kyle E. Mitchell" }
  ],
  "requirePackageLicenseMatch": true,
  "requireClearlyDefined": true
}

The license property is an SPDX license expression that spdx-expression-parse can parse. Any package with standard license metadata or file-level license data from the relevant ClearlyDefined definition that does not satisfy the SPDX license expression according to spdx-satisfies will cause an error.

The whitelist is a map from package name to a node-semver Semantic Versioning range. Packages whose license data don't match the SPDX license expression in license but have a name and version described in whitelist will not cause an error.

The corrections flag toggles community corrections to npm package license metadata. When enabled, licensee will check license and whitelist against license values from npm-license-corrections when available.

The optional ignore array instructs licensee to approve packages without considering their license metadata. Ignore rules can take one of three forms:

1. {"scope":"x"} ignores all packages in scope x, like @x/y.

2. {"prefix":"x"} ignores all packages whose names start with x, but not scoped packages whose scopes do not match, like @y/x.

3. {"author":"x"} ignores all packages whose authors' names, e-mail addresses, or URLs contain x.

All ignore rules are case-insensitive.

Where the optional property requirePackageLicenseMatch is true, any file-level license hit from ClearlyDefined that does not match the package standard license metadata will cause an error. False by default.

Where the optional property requireClearlyDefined is true, dependencies for which no file-level data is available from ClearlyDefined will cause an error. False by default.

Use

To install and use licensee-plus globally (it has not been published):

npm install --global henritns/licensee-plus
cd your-package
licensee-plus --init
licensee-plus

The licensee-plus script prints a report about dependencies and their license terms to standard output. It exits with status 0 when all packages in ./node_modules meet the configured licensing criteria and 1 when one or more do not.

To install it as a development dependency of your package:

cd your-package
npm install --save-dev henritns/licensee-plus

Consider adding licensee-plus to your npm scripts:

{
  "scripts": {
    "posttest": "licensee-plus"
  }
}

For output as newline-delimited JSON objects, for further processing:

{
  "scripts": {
    "posttest": "licensee-plus --ndjson"
  }
}

To skip the readout of license information:

{
  "scripts": {
    "posttest": "licensee-plus --quiet"
  }
}

If you want a readout of dependency information, but don't want your continuous integration going red, you can ignore licensee-plus's exit code:

{
  "scripts": {
    "posttest": "licensee-plus || true"
  }
}

To save the readout of license information to a file:

{
  "scripts": {
    "posttest": "licensee-plus | tee LICENSES || true"
  }
}

Alternatively, for a readout of just packages without approved licenses:

{
  "scripts": {
    "posttest": "licensee-plus --errors-only"
  }
}

JavaScript Module

The package exports an asynchronous function of three arguments:

1. A configuration object in the same form as .licensee.json.

2. The path of the package to check.

3. An error-first callback that yields an array of objects, one per dependency.

Licensing

This package is based on and incorporates original code from licensee.js by Kyle Mitchell. All code in this package, old and new, is licensed under the Apache-2.0 license.