The items below can be configured by adding an .ort.yml
file to the root of the source code repository. All
configurations in this file apply only to this Project's context. Usually the global context is preferred for an
increased degree of automation and local configurations should only be done if there are good reasons.
- excludes - Mark files, directories or package manager scopes as not included in released artifacts.
- curations - Overwrite package metadata, set a concluded license or correct license findings.
- resolutions - Resolve any issues or policy rule violations.
- license choices - Select a license for packages which offer a license choice.
The sections below explain each in further detail. Prefer to learn by example? See the .ort.yml for the OSS Review Toolkit itself.
Excludes are used to define which OSS is distributed to third parties and which code is only used internally, e.g. for building, documenting or testing the code.
Exclusions apply to paths (files/directories) or scopes. Examples of currently supported exclusions:
- all dependencies defined in
./test/pom.xml
in Maven-based projects. - dependencies in scopes
test
orprovided
.
ORT's default philosophy is to analyze and scan everything it can find to build a complete picture of a repository and its dependencies.
However, the users may not be interested in the results for components that are not included in their released artifacts, for example build files, documentation, examples or test code. To support such use cases, ORT provides a mechanism to mark files, directories or scopes included in the repository as excluded.
Note that by default the excluded parts are analyzed and scanned, but are treated differently in the reports ORT generates:
- The issue summary does not show issues in the excluded parts.
- The excluded parts are grayed out.
- The reason for the exclusion is shown next to the result.
This is a rather safe option, since the reports still display elements marked as excluded and thus allow the user to
verify the correctness of the declared exclusions. If it is clear that the excluded projects or scopes are irrelevant
from a compliance point of view, ORT can be configured to skip them completely during the analysis phase. The affected
elements are then not processed any further and do not occur in generated reports. Especially for larger projects with
many excluded elements, this can significantly reduce resource usage and analysis time. To enable this mode, add the
following declaration to the .ort.yml
file:
analyzer:
skip_excluded: true
excludes:
...
To be able to show why a part is excluded, each exclude must include an explanation. The explanation consists of:
reason
-- must be selected from a predefined list of options.comment
-- free text that provides an optional explanation.
Path excludes are used to mark a complete path as excluded.
The code below shows the structure of a path exclude in the .ort.yml
file:
excludes:
paths:
- pattern: "A glob pattern matching files or paths."
reason: "One of PathExcludeReason e.g. BUILD_TOOL_OF, DOCUMENTATION_OF or TEST_OF."
comment: "A comment further explaining why the path is excluded."
Where the list of available options for reason
is defined in
PathExcludeReason.kt. For how to write a glob pattern, please
see the
AntPathMatcher documentation.
The path exclude above has the following effects:
- All projects found below the
test-data
directory are marked as excluded. - License findings in files below the
test-data
directory are marked as excluded. This can be used in evaluator rules to for instance change the severity from error to warning.
excludes:
paths:
- pattern: "test-data/**"
reason: "TEST_OF"
comment: "This directory contains test data which are not distributed."
Many package managers support grouping of dependencies by their use. Such groups are called scopes
in ORT. For
example, Maven provides the scopes compile
, provided
, and test
, while NPM scopes are dependencies
and
devDependencies
.
You can use regular expressions for pattern
to match the scopes to exclude. This can be useful, for example, with
Gradle, which creates a relatively large number of scopes (internally Gradle calls them configurations
).
Scopes excludes always apply to all found projects in a scan.
excludes:
scopes:
- pattern: "test.*"
reason: "TEST_DEPENDENCY_OF"
comment: "Packages for testing only."
The above example excludes all the following scopes for all projects: testAnnotationProcessor
,testApi
,
testCompile
, testCompileClasspath
, testCompileOnly
, testImplementation
, testRuntime
, testRuntimeClasspath
,
testRuntimeOnly
.
Where the list of available options for scopes is defined in ScopeExcludeReason.kt.
See the examples below for typical scope excludes for the supported package managers. Note that you must verify that the scopes defined in the examples below match the scopes in your project.
- bower.ort.yml
- bundler.ort.yml
- cargo.ort.yml
- composer.ort.yml
- go-dep.ort.yml
- go-mod.ort.yml
- gradle.ort.yml
- gradle-android.ort.yml
- maven.ort.yml
- npm.ort.yml
- pip.ort.yml
- sbt.ort.yml
- stack.ort.yml
- yarn.ort.yml
License finding curations should be used when you want to correct the licenses detected in the source code of the project. To define curations on global level for third-party packages, please use curations or package configurations.
An ort scan
result represents the detected licenses as a collection of license findings. A single LicenseFinding
is
represented as a tuple: (license id, file path, start line, end line)
. Applying a LicenseFindingCuration
changes the
license-Id of any LicenseFinding
or eliminates the LicenseFinding
in case the license is set to NONE
.
As an example, the following curation would replace similar findings of GPL-2.0-only
with Apache-2.0
in all .cpp
files in the src
directory:
curations:
license_findings:
- path: "src/**/*.cpp"
start_lines: "3"
line_count: 11
detected_license: "GPL-2.0-only"
reason: "CODE"
comment: "The scanner matches a variable named `gpl`."
concluded_license: "Apache-2.0"
To correct identified licenses in a dependency you can use a package configuration to overwrite scanner findings. Note
that this feature requires enableRepositoryPackageConfigurations
to be enabled in the
config.yml.
package_configurations:
- id: 'Maven:com.example:package:1.2.3'
source_artifact_url: "https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/com/example/package/1.2.3/package-1.2.3-sources.jar"
license_finding_curations:
- path: "path/to/problematic/file.java"
start_lines: 22
line_count: 1
detected_license: "GPL-2.0-only"
reason: "CODE"
comment: "The scanner matches a variable named `gpl`."
concluded_license: "Apache-2.0"
For details of the specification, see
LicenseFindingCuration.kt.
The list of available options for reason
are defined in
LicenseFindingCurationReason.kt.
Package curations can be added if you want to correct metadata of third-party dependencies.
The following example corrects the source-artifact URL of the package with the id Maven:com.example:dummy:0.0.1
. Note
that this feature requires enableRepositoryPackageCurations
to be enabled in the
config.yml.
curations:
packages:
- id: "Maven:com.example:dummy:0.0.1"
curations:
comment: "An explanation why the curation is needed."
source_artifact:
url: "https://example.com/sources.zip"
For more information about package curations see the documentation for the curations.yml file.
Resolutions should be used if you are unable to solve an issue by other means.
If a resolution is not project-specific than add it to resolutions.yml so that it is applied to each scan.
Resolutions allow you to resolve issues, policy rule violations or vulnerabilities by marking them as acceptable. A
resolution is applied to specific issues or violations via the regular expression specified in the message
of a
resolution.
To be able to show why a resolution is acceptable, each resolution must include an explanation. The explanation consists of:
reason
-- an identifier selected from a predefined list of options.comment
-- free text, providing an explanation and optionally a link to further information.
If the ORT results show issues, the best approach is usually to fix them and run the scan again. However, sometimes it is not possible, for example if an issue occurs in the license scan of a third-party dependency which cannot be fixed or updated.
In such situations, you can resolve the issue in any future scan by adding a resolution to the .ort.yml
to mark it
as acceptable.
The code below shows the structure of an issue resolution in the .ort.yml
file:
resolutions:
issues:
- message: "A regular expression matching the error message."
reason: "One of IssueResolutionReason e.g BUILD_TOOL_ISSUE,CANT_FIX_ISSUE."
comment: "A comment further explaining why the reason above is acceptable."
Where the list of available options for reason
is defined in
IssueResolutionReason.kt
For example, to ignore an issue related to a build tool problem, your .ort.yml
could include:
resolutions:
issues:
- message: "Does not have X.*"
reason: "BUILD_TOOL_ISSUE"
comment: "Error caused by a known issue for which a fix is being implemented, see https://github.com/..."
Resolutions should not be used to resolve license policy rule violations as they do not change the generated open source notices. To resolve a license policy rule violation either add a license finding curation to the .ort.yml file if the finding is in your code repository or add a curation to the curations.yml if the violation occurs in a third-party dependency.
The code below shows the structure of a policy rule violation resolution in the .ort.yml
file:
resolutions:
rule_violations:
- message: "A regular expression matching the policy rule violation message."
reason: "One of RuleViolationResolutionReason e.g. CANT_FIX_EXCEPTION, DYNAMIC_LINKAGE_EXCEPTION."
comment: "A comment further explaining why the reason above is applicable."
Where the list of available options for reason
is defined in
RuleViolationResolutionReason.kt.
For example, to confirm you acquired a commercial Qt license for your project, your .ort.yml
could include:
resolutions:
rule_violations:
- message: ".*LicenseRef-scancode-qt-commercial-1.1 found in 'third-party/qt/LICENSE'.*"
reason: "LICENSE_ACQUIRED_EXCEPTION"
comment: "Commercial Qt license for the project was purchased, for details see https://jira.example.com/issues/SOURCING-5678"
The code below shows the structure of a vulnerability resolution in the .ort.yml
file:
resolutions:
vulnerabilities:
- id: "A regular expression matching the vulnerability id."
reason: "One of VulnerabilityResolutionReason e.g. CANT_FIX_VULNERABILITY, INEFFECTIVE_VULNERABILITY."
comment: "A comment further explaining why the reason above is applicable."
Where the list of available options for reason
is defined in
VulnerabilityResolutionReason.kt.
For example, to ignore a vulnerability that is ineffective, because it is not invoked in your project, your .ort.yml
could include:
resolutions:
vulnerabilities:
- id: "CVE-9999-9999"
reason: "INEFFECTIVE_VULNERABILITY"
comment: "CVE-9999-9999 is a false positive"
For multi-licensed dependencies a specific license can be selected. The license choice can be applied to a package or
globally to an SPDX expression in the project. A choice is only valid for licenses combined with the SPDX operator OR
.
The choices are applied in the evaluator, and the reporter to the effective license of a package, which is calculated by
the chosen LicenseView.
To select a license from a multi-licensed dependency, specified by its packageId
, an SPDX expression for a choice
must be provided. The choice
is either applied to the whole effective SPDX expression of the package or to an optional
given
SPDX expression that can represent only a sub-expression of the whole effective SPDX expression.
license_choices:
package_license_choices:
- package_id: "Maven:com.example:first:0.0.1"
license_choices:
# The input of the calculated effective license would be: (A OR B) AND ((C OR D) AND E)
- given: A OR B
choice: A
# The result would be: A AND ((C OR D) AND E)
# The input of the current effective license would be: A AND ((C OR D) AND E)
- given: (C OR D) AND E
choice: C AND E
# The result would be: A AND C AND E
- package_id: "Maven:com.example:second:2.3.4"
license_choices:
# Without a 'given', the 'choice' is applied to the effective license expression if it is a valid choice.
# The input from the calculated effective license would be: (C OR D) AND E
- choice: C AND E
# The result would be: C AND E
To globally select a license from an SPDX expression, that offers a choice, an SPDX expression for a given
and a
choice
must be provided. The choice
is applied to the whole given
SPDX expression. With a repository license
choice, the license choice is applied to each package that offers this license as a choice. Not allowing given
to be
null helps only applying the choice to a wanted given
as opposed to all licenses with that choice, which could lead to
unwanted choices. The license choices for a project can be overwritten by applying a
license choice to a package.
license_choices:
repository_license_choices:
- given: "A OR B"
choice: "B"
The choice will be applied to the WHOLE given
license. If the choice does not provide a valid result, an exception
will be thrown upon deserialization.
Example for an invalid configuration:
# This is invalid, as 'E' must be in the resulting license.
- given: (C OR D) AND E
choice: C