diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'README.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 66 |
1 files changed, 66 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..902c150 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +# License Classifier + +[](https://travis-ci.org/google/licenseclassifier) + +## Introduction + +The license classifier is a library and set of tools that can analyze text to +determine what type of license it contains. It searches for license texts in a +file and compares them to an archive of known licenses. These files could be, +e.g., `LICENSE` files with a single or multiple licenses in it, or source code +files with the license text in a comment. + +A "confidence level" is associated with each result indicating how close the +match was. A confidence level of `1.0` indicates an exact match, while a +confidence level of `0.0` indicates that no license was able to match the text. + +## Adding a new license + +Adding a new license is straight-forward: + +1. Create a file in `licenses/`. + + * The filename should be the name of the license or its abbreviation. If + the license is an Open Source license, use the appropriate identifier + specified at https://spdx.org/licenses/. + * If the license is the "header" version of the license, append the suffix + "`.header`" to it. See `licenses/README.md` for more details. + +2. Add the license name to the list in `license_type.go`. + +3. Regenerate the `licenses.db` file by running the license serializer: + + ```shell + $ license_serializer -output licenseclassifier/licenses + ``` + +4. Create and run appropriate tests to verify that the license is indeed + present. + +## Tools + +### Identify license + +`identify_license` is a command line tool that can identify the license(s) +within a file. + +```shell +$ identify_license LICENSE +LICENSE: GPL-2.0 (confidence: 1, offset: 0, extent: 14794) +LICENSE: LGPL-2.1 (confidence: 1, offset: 18366, extent: 23829) +LICENSE: MIT (confidence: 1, offset: 17255, extent: 1059) +``` + +### License serializer + +The `license_serializer` tool regenerates the `licenses.db` archive. The archive +contains preprocessed license texts for quicker comparisons against unknown +texts. + +```shell +$ license_serializer -output licenseclassifier/licenses +``` + +---- +This is not an official Google product (experimental or otherwise), it is just +code that happens to be owned by Google. |