Dump the software license list of Python packages installed with pip.
- Description
- Installation
- Usage
- Command-Line Options
- Dockerfile
- About UnicodeEncodeError
- License
- Uninstallation
- Contributing
pip-licenses
is a CLI tool for checking the software license of installed Python packages with pip.
Implemented with the idea inspired by composer licenses
command in Composer (a.k.a PHP package management tool).
https://getcomposer.org/doc/03-cli.md#licenses
Install it via PyPI using pip
command.
# Install or Upgrade to newest available version
$ pip install -U pip-licenses
# If upgrading from pip-licenses 3.x, remove PTable
$ pip uninstall -y PTable
Note for Python 3.7 users: pip-licenses 4.x discontinued support earlier than the Python 3.7 EOL schedule. If you want to use it with Python 3.7, install pip-licenses 3.x.
# Using old version for the Python 3.7 environment
$ pip install 'pip-licenses<4.0'
Note: If you are still using Python 2.7, install version less than 2.0. No new features will be provided for version 1.x.
$ pip install 'pip-licenses<2.0'
Execute the command with your venv (or virtualenv) environment.
# Install packages in your venv environment
(venv) $ pip install Django pip-licenses
# Check the licenses with your venv environment
(venv) $ pip-licenses
Name Version License
Django 2.0.2 BSD
pytz 2017.3 MIT
By default, this tool finds the license from Trove Classifiers or package Metadata. Some Python packages declare their license only in Trove Classifiers.
(See also): Set license to MIT in setup.py by alisianoi ・ Pull Request #1058 ・ pypa/setuptools, PEP 314#License
For example, even if you check with the pip show
command, the license is displayed as UNKNOWN
.
(venv) $ pip show setuptools
Name: setuptools
Version: 38.5.0
Summary: Easily download, build, install, upgrade, and uninstall Python packages
Home-page: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools
Author: Python Packaging Authority
Author-email: [email protected]
License: UNKNOWN
The mixed mode (--from=mixed
) of this tool works well and looks for licenses.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --from=mixed --with-system | grep setuptools
setuptools 38.5.0 MIT License
In mixed mode, it first tries to look for licenses in the Trove Classifiers. When not found in the Trove Classifiers, the license declared in Metadata is displayed.
If you want to look only in metadata, use --from=meta
. If you want to look only in Trove Classifiers, use --from=classifier
.
To list license information from both metadata and classifier, use --from=all
.
Note: If neither can find license information, please check with the with-authors
and with-urls
options and contact the software author.
- The
m
keyword is prepared as alias ofmeta
. - The
c
keyword is prepared as alias ofclassifier
. - The
mix
keyword is prepared as alias ofmixed
.- Default behavior in this tool
By default, it is ordered by package name.
If you give arguments to the --order
option, you can output in other sorted order.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --order=license
By default, it is output to the plain
format.
When executed with the --format=markdown
option, you can output list in markdown format. The m
md
keyword is prepared as alias of markdown
.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=markdown
| Name | Version | License |
|--------|---------|---------|
| Django | 2.0.2 | BSD |
| pytz | 2017.3 | MIT |
When inserted in a markdown document, it is rendered as follows:
Name | Version | License |
---|---|---|
Django | 2.0.2 | BSD |
pytz | 2017.3 | MIT |
When executed with the --format=rst
option, you can output list in "Grid tables" of reStructuredText format. The r
rest
keyword is prepared as alias of rst
.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=rst
+--------+---------+---------+
| Name | Version | License |
+--------+---------+---------+
| Django | 2.0.2 | BSD |
+--------+---------+---------+
| pytz | 2017.3 | MIT |
+--------+---------+---------+
When executed with the --format=confluence
option, you can output list in Confluence (or JIRA) Wiki markup format. The c
keyword is prepared as alias of confluence
.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=confluence
| Name | Version | License |
| Django | 2.0.2 | BSD |
| pytz | 2017.3 | MIT |
When executed with the --format=html
option, you can output list in HTML table format. The h
keyword is prepared as alias of html
.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=html
<table>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Version</th>
<th>License</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Django</td>
<td>2.0.2</td>
<td>BSD</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>pytz</td>
<td>2017.3</td>
<td>MIT</td>
</tr>
</table>
When executed with the --format=json
option, you can output list in JSON format easily allowing post-processing. The j
keyword is prepared as alias of json
.
[
{
"Author": "Django Software Foundation",
"License": "BSD",
"Name": "Django",
"URL": "https://www.djangoproject.com/",
"Version": "2.0.2"
},
{
"Author": "Stuart Bishop",
"License": "MIT",
"Name": "pytz",
"URL": "http://pythonhosted.org/pytz",
"Version": "2017.3"
}
]
When executed with the --format=json-license-finder
option, you can output list in JSON format that is identical to LicenseFinder. The jlf
keyword is prepared as alias of jlf
.
This makes pip-licenses a drop-in replacement for LicenseFinder.
[
{
"licenses": ["BSD"],
"name": "Django",
"version": "2.0.2"
},
{
"licenses": ["MIT"],
"name": "pytz",
"version": "2017.3"
}
]
When executed with the --format=csv
option, you can output list in quoted CSV format. Useful when you want to copy/paste the output to an Excel sheet.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=csv
"Name","Version","License"
"Django","2.0.2","BSD"
"pytz","2017.3","MIT"
When executed with the --format=plain-vertical
option, you can output a simple plain vertical output that is similar to Angular CLI's
--extractLicenses flag. This format minimizes rightward drift.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=plain-vertical --with-license-file --no-license-path
pytest
5.3.4
MIT license
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2004-2020 Holger Krekel and others
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
When executed with the --summary
option, you can output a summary of each license.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --summary --from=classifier --with-system
Count License
2 BSD License
4 MIT License
Note: When using this option, only --order=count
or --order=license
has an effect for the --order
option. And using --with-authors
and --with-urls
will be ignored.
When executed with the --output-file
option, write the result to the path specified by the argument.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=rst --output-file=/tmp/output.rst
created path: /tmp/output.rst
When executed with the --ignore-packages
option, ignore the package specified by argument from list output.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --ignore-packages django
Name Version License
pytz 2017.3 MIT
Package names of arguments can be separated by spaces.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --with-system --ignore-packages django pip pip-licenses
Name Version License
prettytable 3.5.0 BSD License
pytz 2017.3 MIT
setuptools 38.5.0 UNKNOWN
wcwidth 0.2.5 MIT License
When executed with the packages
option, look at the package specified by argument from list output.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --packages django
Name Version License
Django 2.0.2 BSD
Package names of arguments can be separated by spaces.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --with-system --packages prettytable pytz
Name Version License
prettytable 3.5.0 BSD License
pytz 2017.3 MIT
By default, system packages such as pip
and setuptools
are ignored.
And pip-licenses
and the implicit dependency prettytable
and wcwidth
will also be ignored.
If you want to output all including system package, use the --with-system
option.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --with-system
Name Version License
Django 2.0.2 BSD
pip 9.0.1 MIT
pip-licenses 1.0.0 MIT License
prettytable 3.5.0 BSD License
pytz 2017.3 MIT
setuptools 38.5.0 UNKNOWN
wcwidth 0.2.5 MIT License
When executed with the --with-authors
option, output with author of the package.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --with-authors
Name Version License Author
Django 2.0.2 BSD Django Software Foundation
pytz 2017.3 MIT Stuart Bishop
For packages without Metadata, the license is output as UNKNOWN
. To get more package information, use the --with-urls
option.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --with-urls
Name Version License URL
Django 2.0.2 BSD https://www.djangoproject.com/
pytz 2017.3 MIT http://pythonhosted.org/pytz
When executed with the --with-description
option, output with short description of the package.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --with-description
Name Version License Description
Django 2.0.2 BSD A high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
pytz 2017.3 MIT World timezone definitions, modern and historical
When executed with the --with-license-file
option, output the location of the package's license file on disk and the full contents of that file. Due to the length of these fields, this option is best paired with --format=json
.
If you also want to output the file NOTICE
distributed under Apache License etc., specify the --with-notice-file
option additionally.
Note: If you want to keep the license file path secret, specify --no-license-path
option together.
Some package data contains Unicode characters which might cause problems for certain output formats (in particular ReST tables). If this filter is enabled, all characters which cannot be encoded with a given code page (see --filter-code-page
) will be removed from any input strings (e.g. package name, description).
If the input strings are filtered (see --filter-strings
), you can specify the applied code page (default latin-1
). A list of all available code pages can be found codecs module document.
Fail (exit with code 1) on the first occurrence of the licenses of the semicolon-separated list
If --from=all
, the option will apply to the metadata license field.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --fail-on="MIT License;BSD License"
Note: Packages with multiple licenses will fail if at least one license is included in the fail-on list. For example:
# keyring library has 2 licenses
$ pip-licenses | grep keyring
keyring 21.4.0 Python Software Foundation License, MIT License
# If just "Python Software Foundation License" is specified, it will fail.
$ pip-licenses --fail-on="Python Software Foundation License;"
$ echo $?
1
Fail (exit with code 1) if none of the package licenses are in the semicolon-separated list
If --from=all
, the option will apply to the metadata license field.
(venv) $ pip-licenses --allow-only="MIT License;BSD License"
Note: Packages with multiple licenses will only be allowed if at least one license is included in the allow-only list. For example:
# keyring library has 2 licenses
$ pip-licenses --package keyring
Name Version License
keyring 23.0.1 MIT License; Python Software Foundation License
# One or both licenses must be specified (order does not matter). Following checks will pass:
$ pip-licenses --package keyring --allow-only="MIT License"
$ pip-licenses --package keyring --allow-only="BSD License;MIT License"
$ pip-licenses --package keyring --allow-only="Python Software Foundation License"
$ pip-licenses --package keyring --allow-only="Python Software Foundation License;MIT License"
# If none of the license in the allow list match, the check will fail.
$ pip-licenses --package keyring --allow-only="BSD License"
$ echo $?
1
Other, please make sure to execute the --help
option.
You can check the package license used by your app in the isolated Docker environment.
# Clone this repository to local
$ git clone https://github.com/raimon49/pip-licenses.git
$ cd pip-licenses
# Create your app's requirements.txt file
# Other ways, pip freeze > docker/requirements.txt
$ echo "Flask" > docker/requirements.txt
# Build docker image
$ docker build . -t myapp-licenses
# Check the package license in container
$ docker run --rm myapp-licenses
Name Version License
Click 7.0 BSD License
Flask 1.0.2 BSD License
Jinja2 2.10 BSD License
MarkupSafe 1.1.1 BSD License
Werkzeug 0.15.2 BSD License
itsdangerous 1.1.0 BSD License
# Check with options
$ docker run --rm myapp-licenses --summary
Count License
4 BSD
2 BSD-3-Clause
# When you need help
$ docker run --rm myapp-licenses --help
Note: This Docker image can not check package licenses with C and C ++ Extensions. It only works with pure Python package dependencies.
If you want to resolve build environment issues, try using not slim image and more.
diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index bfc4edc..175e968 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-FROM python:3.11-slim-bullseye
+FROM python:3.11-bullseye
If a UnicodeEncodeError
occurs, check your environment variables LANG
and LC_TYPE
.
Often occurs in isolated environments such as Docker and tox.
See useful reports:
- prettytable by Luke Maurits and maintainer of fork version Jazzband team under the BSD-3-Clause License
- Note: This package implicitly requires wcwidth.
pip-licenses
has been implemented in the policy to minimize the dependence on external package.
Uninstall package and dependent package with pip
command.
$ pip uninstall pip-licenses prettytable wcwidth