license_finder_rails_assets

This gem extends license_finder, making it treat local asset files as packages.

It's a bit experimental, which is why it's a gem and not a PR against license_finder. Once it's gained some stability and 'niceness' we intended to try to get it added to license_finder :-)

Installation and Usage

$ cd mycoolrailsapp
$ gem install license_finder_rails_assets
$ license_finder_rails_app

If you're using bundler to manage your dependencies:

$ cd mycoolrailsapp
$ bundle add --group=development,test license_finder_rails_assets
$ bundle exec license_finder_rails_app

You only need to use license_finder_rails_assets to run license validation steps, for dependency license tweaks (i.e. any of the license, ignored_dependencies, whitelist, or blacklist commands) you can use license_finder as normal (although license_finder_rails_assets will still work)

How it works

Under the hood the license_finder_rails_assets executable requires license_finder, then appends a new package manager to the LicenseFinder::Scanner::PACKAGE_MANAGERS constant (this is what causes a warning about redefining a constant). Other than that, it just contains a normal LicenseFinder::PackageManager and LicenseFinder::Package implementation for rails assets.

Future work

• Rather than having each file as its own dependency, try to figure out where package boundaries lie.
  • Detect license files (e.g. LICENSE, license.txt)
• Attempt to detect license declarations within comments.