[OE-core] automated license reporting

[Jon Mason]

On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 8:50 PM Rob Walton <Rob.Walton at arm.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>
> We're working with OpenEmbedded/yocto in a project; we're trying to create an HTML license report for our users, leveraging the license.manifest files output from license_image.bbclass.
>
>
> However some relatively crucial information relevant to the report isn't provided in the manifests. The extra information I'm interested in is the contents of the HOMEPAGE and SUMMARY variables for each package/blob recorded by the manifest.
>
>
> I'm proposing to submit a patch to add the following to `write_license_files`:
>
>
> -                license_file.write("LICENSE: %s\n\n" % pkg_dic[pkg]["LICENSE"])
> -
> +                license_file.write("LICENSE: %s\n" % pkg_dic[pkg]["LICENSE"])
> +                license_file.write("SUMMARY: %s\n" % pkg_dic[pkg].get("SUMMARY", ""))
> +                license_file.write("HOMEPAGE: %s\n\n" % pkg_dic[pkg].get("HOMEPAGE", ""))
>
> At the moment it isn't a problem for us if this extra information is missing for /some/ packages, as long as it is included at least once per recipe (which is the case).

Sorry, but why is this a problem?  Is there some legal requirement
this fulfills, or does is this an internal standard?

> The above patch would rely on another patch to add extra output in package.bbclass::emit_pkg_data
>
>
> +        write_if_exists(sf, pkg, 'HOMEPAGE')
>
> We also have a bbclass to convert the license.manifest(s) to JSON format for easier machine readability, so we can automate this process in our build system. This bbclass is also potentially upstreamable.
>
> My questions are: Would members of the community object to these patches? Are there any other suggestions for grabbing this extra info without submitting the patches? Would anyone else in the community find this useful?

IMHO, the license file is for only the licenses of the relevant
projects.  This would muddy the waters.  Perhaps creating another file
that has all of the relevant information you desire would be better.

Thanks,
Jon

>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Rob
>
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