check-licenses
Version:
Check the licenses for the packages that you are using
147 lines (118 loc) • 5.75 kB
Markdown
# Check Licenses [](https://www.npmjs.com/package/check-licenses) [](https://github.com/franciscop/check-licenses/blob/master/.github/workflows/tests.yml)
A simple tool to check all the licenses in your dependencies:
<img src="./assets/demo.webp" alt="Example command" width="400px" />
- Find all dependencies and their sub-dependencies in your project
- Validate both the `package.json` and the `LICENSE` file per dependency
- Only reads `dependencies` and not `devDependencies`
- Uses `package-lock.json` for deterministic resolution
- Handles multiple versions of the same library just fine
## Getting started
You can either use `npx check-licenses`, or install this library globally and then run it at once:
```bash
npm i check-licenses -g
licenses # Note how this is just `licenses`
licenses --list
licenses --help
# Or use the library straight from npm
npx check-licenses
npx check-licenses --list
npx check-licenses --help
npx --yes check-licenses # To avoid being asked to install it, e.g. in a CI
```
The main command will trigger a license summary:
```bash
$ licenses
MIT —————————————————— 56
ISC —————————————————— 7
CC0-1.0 —————————————— 4
BSD-2-Clause ————————— 2
Apache-1.0 ——————————— 2
Apache-2.0 ——————————— 2
CC-BY-3.0 ———————————— 1
```
If you want to dig deeper and see which package uses what license, use the `--list` flag.
## Show the licenses used
The base command is to count how many licenses of each type are in use:
```bash
$ licenses
MIT —————————————————— 1328
ISC —————————————————— 113
CC0-1.0 —————————————— 36
BSD-3-Clause ————————— 36
Apache-2.0 ——————————— 5
BSD-2-Clause ————————— 3
Zlib ————————————————— 1
CC-BY-3.0 ———————————— 1
GPL-2.0 —————————————— 1
```
## List all dependencies
This can be used to find out what each of our dependencies (direct and indirect) is using. It might list multiple licenses in a single package:
```bash
$ licenses --list
...
test-exclude@5.2.3 ————————————— ISC
text-table@0.2.0 ——————————————— MIT
textarea-caret@3.0.2 ——————————— MIT
throat@4.1.0 ——————————————————— MIT
through@2.3.8 —————————————————— Apache-2.0 + MIT
through2@2.0.5 ————————————————— MIT
thunky@1.1.0 ——————————————————— MIT
timers-browserify@2.0.11 ——————— MIT
...
```
This list is normally quite long, but it can be easily `grep`-ed. For example, to find all of the `Apache-2.0` licenses:
```bash
$ licenses --list | grep Apache-2.0
fb-watchman@2.0.1 —————————————— Apache-2.0
forever-agent@0.6.1 ———————————— Apache-2.0
formik@2.1.5 ——————————————————— Apache-2.0 + MIT
harmony-reflect@1.6.1 —————————— Apache-2.0 + MPL-1.1
human-signals@1.1.1 ———————————— Apache-2.0
```
If there are multiple licenses in a library it's marked with a `+`. You can indeed also grep that!
```bash
$ licenses --list | grep +
...
are-we-there-yet@1.1.5 ————————— ISC + MIT
atob@2.1.2 ————————————————————— Apache-2.0 + MIT
detect-node@2.0.4 —————————————— ISC + MIT
electron-to-chromium@1.3.534 ——— ISC + MIT
formik@2.1.5 ——————————————————— Apache-2.0 + MIT
fs.realpath@1.0.0 —————————————— ISC + MIT
harmony-reflect@1.6.1 —————————— Apache-2.0 + MPL-1.1
json-schema@0.2.3 —————————————— AFLv2.1 + BSD
killable@1.0.1 ————————————————— ISC + MIT
lodash-es@4.17.15 —————————————— CC0-1.0 + MIT
lodash.memoize@4.1.2 ——————————— CC0-1.0 + MIT
...
```
## Finding bad licenses
Let's say you run this tool and find the dependencies, of which you really don't want to follow CC-BY-3.0:
```bash
$ licenses
DOC —————————————————— 56
MIT —————————————————— 56
ISC —————————————————— 7
CC0-1.0 —————————————— 4
BSD-2-Clause ————————— 2
Apache-1.0 ——————————— 2
Apache-2.0 ——————————— 2
CC-BY-3.0 ———————————— 1
```
Then you can also use it to track down which dependencies have this license:
```bash
$ licenses --list | grep CC-BY-3.0
spdx-exceptions@2.3.0 ——————— CC-BY-3.0
```
With this information you can either:
- Dig deeper: some times it might be dual-licensed
- Find out where this comes from with `npm ls`:
```bash
$ npm ls spdx-exceptions
check-licenses@0.2.0 /home/francisco/check-licenses
└─┬ meow@8.0.0
└─┬ normalize-package-data@3.0.0
└─┬ validate-npm-package-license@3.0.4
└─┬ spdx-expression-parse@3.0.1
└── spdx-exceptions@2.3.0
```