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License Compliance (ULTIMATE)
Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 11.0.
Overview
If you are using GitLab CI/CD, you can search your project dependencies for their licenses using License Compliance.
You can take advantage of License Compliance by either including the job
in your existing .gitlab-ci.yml file or by implicitly using
Auto License Compliance
that is provided by Auto DevOps.
GitLab checks the License Compliance report, compares the licenses between the
source and target branches, and shows the information right on the merge request.
Blacklisted licenses will be clearly visible with an x red icon next to them
as well as new licenses which need a decision from you. In addition, you can
manually approve or blacklist
licenses in your project's settings.
NOTE: Note:
If the license compliance report doesn't have anything to compare to, no information
will be displayed in the merge request area. That is the case when you add the
license_scanning job in your .gitlab-ci.yml for the first time.
Consecutive merge requests will have something to compare to and the license
compliance report will be shown properly.
If you are a project or group Maintainer, you can click on a license to be given the choice to approve it or blacklist it.
Use cases
It helps you find what licenses your project uses in its dependencies, and decide for each of then whether to allow it or forbid it. For example, your application is using an external (open source) library whose license is incompatible with yours.
Supported languages and package managers
The following languages and package managers are supported.
| Language | Package managers | Scan Tool |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript | Bower, npm, yarn (experimental support) | License Finder |
| Go | Godep, go get (experimental support), gvt (experimental support), glide (experimental support), dep (experimental support), trash (experimental support) and govendor (experimental support), go mod (experimental support) | License Finder |
| Java | Gradle, Maven | License Finder |
| .NET | Nuget (.NET Framework is supported via the mono project. Windows specific dependencies are not supported at this time.) | License Finder |
| Python | pip | License Finder |
| Ruby | gem | License Finder |
| Erlang | rebar (experimental support) | License Finder |
| Objective-C, Swift | Carthage , CocoaPods v0.39 and below (experimental support) | License Finder |
| Elixir | mix (experimental support) | License Finder |
| C++/C | conan (experimental support) | License Finder |
| Scala | sbt (experimental support) | License Finder |
| Rust | cargo (experimental support) | License Finder |
| PHP | composer (experimental support) | License Finder |
Requirements
To run a License Compliance scanning job, you need GitLab Runner with the
docker executor.
Configuration
For GitLab 12.8 and later, to enable License Compliance, you must
include the
License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml template
that's provided as a part of your GitLab installation.
For older versions of GitLab from 11.9 to 12.7, you must
include the
License-Management.gitlab-ci.yml template.
For GitLab versions earlier than 11.9, you can copy and use the job as defined
that template.
NOTE: Note:
In GitLab 13.0, the License-Management.gitlab-ci.yml template is scheduled to be removed.
Use License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml instead.
Add the following to your .gitlab-ci.yml file:
include:
- template: License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
The included template will create a license_scanning job in your CI/CD pipeline
and scan your dependencies to find their licenses.
NOTE: Note:
Before GitLab 12.8, the license_scanning job was named license_management.
In GitLab 13.0, the license_management job is scheduled to be removed completely,
so you're advised to migrate to the license_scanning job and used the new
License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml template.
The results will be saved as a License Compliance report artifact that you can later download and analyze. Due to implementation limitations, we always take the latest License Compliance artifact available. Behind the scenes, the GitLab License Compliance Docker image is used to detect the languages/frameworks and in turn analyzes the licenses.
The License Compliance settings can be changed through environment variables by using the
variables parameter in .gitlab-ci.yml.
Available variables
License Compliance can be configured using environment variables.
| Environment variable | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
MAVEN_CLI_OPTS |
no | Additional arguments for the mvn executable. If not supplied, defaults to -DskipTests. |
LICENSE_FINDER_CLI_OPTS |
no | Additional arguments for the license_finder executable. For example, if your project has both Golang and Ruby code stored in different directories and you want to only scan the Ruby code, you can update your .gitlab-ci-yml template to specify which project directories to scan, like LICENSE_FINDER_CLI_OPTS: '--debug --aggregate-paths=. ruby'. |
LM_JAVA_VERSION |
no | Version of Java. If set to 11, Maven and Gradle use Java 11 instead of Java 8. |
LM_PYTHON_VERSION |
no | Version of Python. If set to 3, dependencies are installed using Python 3 instead of Python 2.7. |
SETUP_CMD |
no | Custom setup for the dependency installation. (experimental) |
Installing custom dependencies
Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 11.4.
The license_management image already embeds many auto-detection scripts, languages,
and packages. Nevertheless, it's almost impossible to cover all cases for all projects.
That's why sometimes it's necessary to install extra packages, or to have extra steps
in the project automated setup, like the download and installation of a certificate.
For that, a LICENSE_MANAGEMENT_SETUP_CMD environment variable can be passed to the container,
with the required commands to run before the license detection.
If present, this variable will override the setup step necessary to install all the packages
of your application (e.g.: for a project with a Gemfile, the setup step could be
bundle install).
For example:
include:
- template: License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
variables:
LICENSE_MANAGEMENT_SETUP_CMD: sh my-custom-install-script.sh
In this example, my-custom-install-script.sh is a shell script at the root
directory of your project.
Overriding the template
If you want to override the job definition (for example, change properties like
variables or dependencies), you need to declare a license_scanning job
after the template inclusion and specify any additional keys under it. For example:
include:
- template: License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
license_scanning:
variables:
CI_DEBUG_TRACE: "true"
Configuring Maven projects
The License Compliance tool provides a MAVEN_CLI_OPTS environment variable which can hold
the command line arguments to pass to the mvn install command which is executed under the hood.
Feel free to use it for the customization of Maven execution. For example:
include:
- template: License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
license_scanning:
variables:
MAVEN_CLI_OPTS: --debug
mvn install runs through all of the build life cycle
stages prior to install, including test. Running unit tests is not directly
necessary for the license scanning purposes and consumes time, so it's skipped
by having the default value of MAVEN_CLI_OPTS as -DskipTests. If you want
to supply custom MAVEN_CLI_OPTS and skip tests at the same time, don't forget
to explicitly add -DskipTests to your options.
If you still need to run tests during mvn install, add -DskipTests=false to
MAVEN_CLI_OPTS.
Selecting the version of Python
- Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 12.0.
- In GitLab 12.2, Python 3.5 became the default.
- In GitLab 12.7, Python 3.8 became the default.
License Compliance uses Python 3.8 and pip 19.1 by default.
If your project requires Python 2, you can switch to Python 2.7 and pip 10.0
by setting the LM_PYTHON_VERSION environment variable to 2.
include:
- template: License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
license_scanning:
variables:
LM_PYTHON_VERSION: 2
Migration from license_management to license_scanning
In GitLab 12.8 a new name for license_management job was introduced. This change was made to improve clarity around the purpose of the scan, which is to scan and collect the types of licenses present in a projects dependencies.
The support of license_management is scheduled to be dropped in GitLab 13.0.
If you're using a custom setup for License Compliance, you're required
to update your CI config accordingly:
- Change the CI template to
License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml. - Change the job name to
license_management(if you mention it in.gitlab-ci.yml). - Change the artifact name to
gl-license-scanning-report.json(if you mention it in.gitlab-ci.yml).
For example, the following .gitlab-ci.yml:
include:
- template: License-Management.gitlab-ci.yml
license_management:
artifacts:
reports:
license_management: gl-license-management-report.json
Should be changed to:
include:
- template: License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
license_scanning:
artifacts:
reports:
license_scanning: gl-license-scanning-report.json
Project policies for License Compliance
Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 11.4.
From the project's settings:
- The list of licenses and their status can be managed.
- Licenses can be manually approved or blacklisted.
To approve or blacklist a license:
-
Either use the Manage licenses button in the merge request widget, or navigate to the project's Settings > CI/CD and expand the License Compliance section.
-
Click the Add a license button.
-
In the License name dropdown, either:
- Select one of the available licenses. You can search for licenses in the field at the top of the list.
- Enter arbitrary text in the field at the top of the list. This will cause the text to be added as a license name to the list.
-
Select the Approve or Blacklist radio button to approve or blacklist respectively the selected license.
To modify an existing license:
-
In the License Compliance list, click the Approved/Declined dropdown to change it to the desired status.
Searching for Licenses:
-
Use the Search box to search for a specific license.
License Compliance report under pipelines
Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 11.2.
From your project's left sidebar, navigate to CI/CD > Pipelines and click on the
pipeline ID that has a license_management job to see the Licenses tab with the listed
licenses (if any).
License list
Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 12.7.
The License list allows you to see your project's licenses and key details about them.
In order for the licenses to appear under the license list, the following requirements must be met:
- The License Compliance CI job must be configured for your project.
- Your project must use at least one of the supported languages and package managers.
Once everything is set, navigate to Security & Compliance > License Compliance in your project's sidebar, and you'll see the licenses displayed, where:
- Name: The name of the license.
- Component: The components which have this license.
