Basic Options

All “Basic” Scan Options

Option lists are two-column lists of command-line options and descriptions, documenting a program’s options. For example:

-c, --copyright

Scan <input> for copyrights.

Sub-Options:

  • --consolidate

-l, --license

Scan <input> for licenses.

Sub-Options:

  • --license-references

  • --license-text

  • --license-text-diagnostics

  • --license-diagnostics

  • --license-url-template TEXT

  • --license-score INT

  • --license-clarity-score

  • --consolidate

  • --unknown-licenses

-p, --package

Scan <input> for packages.

Sub-Options:

  • --consolidate

--system-package

Scan <input> for installed system package databases.

--package-only

Scan <input> for system and application only for package metadata, without license/ copyright detection and package assembly.

-e, --email

Scan <input> for emails.

Sub-Options:

  • --max-email INT

-u, --url

Scan <input> for urls.

Sub-Options:

  • --max-url INT

-i, --info

Scan for and include information such as:

  • Size,

  • Type,

  • Date,

  • Programming language,

  • sha1 and md5 hashes,

  • binary/text/archive/media/source/script flags

  • Additional options through more CLI options

Sub-Options:

  • --mark-source

Note

Unlike previous 2.x versions, -c, -l, and -p are not default. If any combination of these options are used, ScanCode performs only that specific task, and not the others. scancode -l scans only for licenses, and doesn’t scan for copyright/packages/general information/emails/urls. The only notable exception: a --package scan also has license information for package manifests and top-level packages, which are derived regardless of --license option being used.

Note

These options, i.e. -c, -l, -p, -e, -u, and -i can be used together. As in, instead of scancode -c -i -p, you can write scancode -cip and it will be the same.

--generated

Classify automatically generated code files with a flag.

--max-email INT

Report only up to INT emails found in a file. Use 0 for no limit. [Default: 50]

Sub-Option of: --email

--max-url INT

Report only up to INT urls found in a file. Use 0 for no limit. [Default: 50]

Sub-Option of: --url

--license-score INTEGER

Do not return license matches with scores lower than this score. A number between 0 and 100. [Default: 0] Here, a bigger number means a better match, i.e. Setting a higher license score translates to a higher threshold (with equal or smaller number of matches).

Sub-Option of: --license

--license-text

Include the matched text for the detected licenses in the output report.

Sub-Option of: --license

Sub-Options:

  • --license-text-diagnostics

--license-url-template TEXT

Set the template URL used for the license reference URLs.

In a template URL, curly braces ({}) are replaced by the license key. [Default: default: https://scancode-licensedb.aboutcode.org/{}]

Sub-Option of: --license

--license-text-diagnostics

In the matched license text, include diagnostic highlights surrounding with square brackets [] words that are not matched.

Sub-Option of: --license and --license-text

--license-diagnostics

In license detections, include diagnostic details to figure out the license detection post processing steps applied.

Sub-Option of: --license

--unknown-licenses

[EXPERIMENTAL] Detect unknown licenses.

Sub-Option of: --license

--license Option

The --license option detects various kinds of license texts, notices, tags, references and other specialized license declarations like the SPDX license identifier in files.

It adds the following attributes to the file data:

  1. license_detections: This has a mapping of license detection data with the license expression, detection log and license matches. And the license matches contain the license expression for the match, score, more details for the license detected and the rule detected, along with the match text optionally.

  2. license_clues: This is a list of license matches, same as matches in license_detections. These are mere license clues and not perfect detections.

  3. detected_license_expression: This is a scancode license expression string.

  4. detected_license_expression_spdx: This is the SPDX version of detected_license_expression.

  5. percentage_of_license_text: This has a percentage number which denotes what percentage of the resource scanned has legalese words.

Example:

License: Apache-2.0

If we run license detection (with --license-text) on the above text we get the following result for the resource attributes added by the license detection:

{
    "path": "apache-2.0.txt",
    "type": "file",
    "detected_license_expression": "apache-2.0",
    "detected_license_expression_spdx": "Apache-2.0",
    "license_detections": [
        {
            "license_expression": "apache-2.0",
            "matches": [
                {
                    "score": 100.0,
                    "start_line": 1,
                    "end_line": 1,
                    "matched_length": 4,
                    "match_coverage": 100.0,
                    "matcher": "1-hash",
                    "license_expression": "apache-2.0",
                    "rule_identifier": "apache-2.0_65.RULE",
                    "rule_relevance": 100,
                    "rule_url": "https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/tree/develop/src/licensedcode/data/rules/apache-2.0_65.RULE",
                    "matched_text": "License: Apache-2.0"
                }
            ],
            "identifier": "apache_2_0-ec759ae0-ea5a-f138-793e-388520e080c0"
        }
    ],
    "license_clues": [],
    "percentage_of_license_text": 100.0,
    "scan_errors": []
}

We also have top level unique license detections with the same identifier referencing all occurrences of this license detection and counts:

{
    "license_detections": [
        {
            "identifier": "apache_2_0-ec759ae0-ea5a-f138-793e-388520e080c0",
            "license_expression": "apache-2.0",
            "detection_count": 1
        }
    ]
}

--package Option

The --package option detects various package manifests, lockfiles and package-like data and then assembles codebase level packages and dependencies from these package data detected at files. Also tags files if they are part of the packages.

It adds the following attributes to the file data:

  1. package_data: This is a mapping of package data parsed and retrieved from the file, with the fields for the package URL, license detections, copyrights, dependencies, and the various URLs.

  2. for_packages: This is a list of strings pointing to the packages that the files is a part of. The string is basically a packageURL with an UUID as a qualifier.

It adds the following attributes to the top-level in results:

  1. packages: This is a mapping of package data with all the atrributes present in file level package_data with the following extra attributes: package_uid, datafile_paths and datasource_ids.

  2. dependencies: This is a mapping of dependency data from all the lockfiles or package manifests in the scan.

Example:

The following scan result was generated from scanning a package manifest:

{
    "dependencies": [
        {
            "purl": "pkg:bower/get-size",
            "extracted_requirement": "~1.2.2",
            "scope": "dependencies",
            "is_runtime": true,
            "is_optional": false,
            "is_pinned": false,
            "is_direct": true,
            "resolved_package": {},
            "extra_data": {},
            "dependency_uid": "pkg:bower/get-size?uuid=fixed-uid-done-for-testing-5642512d1758",
            "for_package_uid": "pkg:bower/blue-leaf?uuid=fixed-uid-done-for-testing-5642512d1758",
            "datafile_path": "bower.json",
            "datasource_id": "bower_json"
        }
    ],
    "packages": [
        {
            "type": "bower",
            "namespace": null,
            "name": "blue-leaf",
            "version": null,
            "qualifiers": {},
            "subpath": null,
            "primary_language": null,
            "description": "Physics-like animations for pretty particles",
            "release_date": null,
            "parties": [
                {
                "type": null,
                "role": "author",
                "name": "Betty Beta <bbeta@example.com>",
                "email": null,
                "url": null
                }
            ],
            "keywords": [
                "motion",
                "physics",
                "particles"
            ],
            "homepage_url": null,
            "download_url": null,
            "size": null,
            "sha1": null,
            "md5": null,
            "sha256": null,
            "sha512": null,
            "bug_tracking_url": null,
            "code_view_url": null,
            "vcs_url": null,
            "copyright": null,
            "declared_license_expression": "mit",
            "declared_license_expression_spdx": "MIT",
            "license_detections": [
                {
                    "license_expression": "mit",
                    "matches": [
                        {
                            "score": 100.0,
                            "start_line": 1,
                            "end_line": 1,
                            "matched_length": 1,
                            "match_coverage": 100.0,
                            "matcher": "1-spdx-id",
                            "license_expression": "mit",
                            "rule_identifier": "spdx-license-identifier: mit",
                            "rule_url": null,
                            "rule_relevance": 100,
                            "matched_text": "MIT"
                        }
                    ],
                    "identifier": "apache_2_0-ec759abc-ea5a-2a38-793e-312340e080c0"
                }
            ],
            "other_license_expression": null,
            "other_license_expression_spdx": null,
            "other_license_detections": [],
            "extracted_license_statement": "MIT",
            "notice_text": null,
            "source_packages": [],
            "extra_data": {},
            "repository_homepage_url": null,
            "repository_download_url": null,
            "api_data_url": null,
            "package_uid": "pkg:bower/blue-leaf?uuid=fixed-uid-done-for-testing-5642512d1758",
            "datafile_paths": [
                "bower.json"
            ],
            "datasource_ids": [
                "bower_json"
            ],
            "purl": "pkg:bower/blue-leaf"
        }
    ],
    "files": [
        {
            "path": "bower.json",
            "type": "file",
            "package_data": [
                {
                    "type": "bower",
                    "namespace": null,
                    "name": "blue-leaf",
                    "version": null,
                    "qualifiers": {},
                    "subpath": null,
                    "primary_language": null,
                    "description": "Physics-like animations for pretty particles",
                    "release_date": null,
                    "parties": [
                        {
                            "type": null,
                            "role": "author",
                            "name": "Betty Beta <bbeta@example.com>",
                            "email": null,
                            "url": null
                        }
                    ],
                    "keywords": [
                        "motion",
                        "physics",
                        "particles"
                    ],
                    "homepage_url": null,
                    "download_url": null,
                    "size": null,
                    "sha1": null,
                    "md5": null,
                    "sha256": null,
                    "sha512": null,
                    "bug_tracking_url": null,
                    "code_view_url": null,
                    "vcs_url": null,
                    "copyright": null,
                    "declared_license_expression": "mit",
                    "declared_license_expression_spdx": "MIT",
                    "license_detections": [
                        {
                            "license_expression": "mit",
                            "matches": [
                                {
                                    "score": 100.0,
                                    "start_line": 1,
                                    "end_line": 1,
                                    "matched_length": 1,
                                    "match_coverage": 100.0,
                                    "matcher": "1-spdx-id",
                                    "license_expression": "mit",
                                    "rule_identifier": "spdx-license-identifier: mit",
                                    "rule_url": null,
                                    "rule_relevance": 100,
                                    "matched_text": "MIT"
                                }
                            ],
                            "identifier": "apache_2_0-ec759abc-ea5a-2a38-793e-312340e080c0"
                        }
                    ],
                    "other_license_expression": null,
                    "other_license_expression_spdx": null,
                    "other_license_detections": [],
                    "extracted_license_statement": "MIT",
                    "notice_text": null,
                    "source_packages": [],
                    "file_references": [],
                    "extra_data": {},
                    "dependencies": [
                        {
                            "purl": "pkg:bower/get-size",
                            "extracted_requirement": "~1.2.2",
                            "scope": "dependencies",
                            "is_runtime": true,
                            "is_optional": false,
                            "is_pinned": false,
                            "is_direct": true,
                            "resolved_package": {},
                            "extra_data": {}
                        }
                    ],
                    "repository_homepage_url": null,
                    "repository_download_url": null,
                    "api_data_url": null,
                    "datasource_id": "bower_json",
                    "purl": "pkg:bower/blue-leaf"
                }
            ],
            "for_packages": [
                "pkg:bower/blue-leaf?uuid=fixed-uid-done-for-testing-5642512d1758"
            ],
            "scan_errors": []
        }
    ]
}

--info Option

The --info option obtains miscellaneous information about the file being scanned such as mime/filetype, checksums, programming language, and various boolean flags.

It adds the following attributes to the file data:

  1. date: last modified data of the file.

  2. sha1, md5 and sha256: file checksums of various algorithms.

  3. mime_type and file_type: basic file type and mime type/subtype information obtained from libmagic.

  4. programming_language: programming language based on extensions.

  5. is_binary, is_text, is_archive, is_media, is_source, and is_script: various boolean flags with misc. information about the file.

--email Option

The --email option detects and reports email adresses present in scanned files.

It adds the emails attribute to the file data with the following attributes: email with the actual email that was present in the file, start_line and end_line to be able to locate where the email was detected in the file.

--url Option

The --url option detects and reports URLs present in scanned files.

It adds the urls attribute to the file data with the following attributes: url with the actual URL that was present in the file, start_line and end_line to be able to locate where the URL was detected in the file.

--generated Option

The --generated option classifies automatically generated code files with a flag.

An example of using --generated in a scan:

scancode -clpieu --json-pp output.json samples --generated

In the results, for each file the following attribute is added with it’s corresponding true/false value

"is_generated": true

Classification of a file being generated or not is done based on the first few lines having usually encountered generated keywords.

--max-email Option

Dependency

The option --max-email is a sub-option of and requires the option --email.

If in the files that are scanned, in individual files, there are a lot of emails (i.e lists) which are unnecessary and clutter the scan results, --max-email option can be used to report emails only up to a limit in individual files.

Some important INTEGER values of the --max-email INTEGER option:

  • 0 - No limit, include all emails.

  • 50 - Default.

An example usage:

scancode -clpieu --json-pp output.json samples --max-email 5

This only reports 5 email addresses per file and ignores the rest.

--max-url Option

Dependency

The option --max-url is a sub-option of and requires the option --url.

If in the files that are scanned, in individual files, there are a lot of links to other websites (i.e url lists) which are unnecessary and clutter the scan results, --max-url option can be used to report urls only up to a limit in individual files.

Some important INTEGER values of the --max-url INTEGER option:

  • 0 - No limit, include all urls.

  • 50 - Default.

An example usage:

scancode -clpieu --json-pp output.json samples --max-url 10

This only reports 10 urls per file and ignores the rest.

--license-score Option

Dependency

The option --license-score is a sub-option of and requires the option --license.

License matching strictness, i.e. How closely matched licenses are detected in a scan, can be modified by using this --license-score option.

Some important INTEGER values of the --license-score INTEGER option:

  • 0 - Default and Lowest Value, All matches are reported.

  • 100 - Highest Value, Only licenses with a much better match are reported

Here, a bigger number means a better match, i.e. Setting a higher license score translates to a higher threshold for matching licenses (with equal or less number of license matches).

An example usage:

scancode -clpieu --json-pp output.json samples --license-score 70

Here’s the license results on setting the integer value to 100, Vs. the default value 0. This is visualized using ScanCode workbench in the License Info Dashboard.

License scan results of Samples Directory.
../_images/core_lic_score_0.png

License Score 0 (Default).
../_images/core_lic_score_100.png

License Score 100.

--license-text Option

Dependency

The option --license-text is a sub-option of and requires the option --license.

Sub-Option

The option --license-text-diagnostics is a sub-option of --license-text.

With the --license-text option, the scan results attribute “matched text” includes the matched text for the detected license.

An example Scan:

scancode -cplieu --json-pp output.json samples --license-text

An example matched text included in the results is as follows:

"matched_text":
 "  This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
 warranty.  In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
 arising from the use of this software.
 Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
 including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
 freely, subject to the following restrictions:
 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
 claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
 in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
 appreciated but is not required.
 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
 misrepresented as being the original software.
 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

 Jean-loup Gailly        Mark Adler
 jloup@gzip.org          madler@alumni.caltech.edu"

  • The file in which this license was detected: samples/arch/zlib.tar.gz-extract/zlib-1.2.8/zlib.h

  • License name: “ZLIB License”

--license-url-template Option

Dependency

The option --license-url-template is a sub-option of and requires the option --license.

The --license-url-template option sets the template URL used for the license reference URLs.

The default template URL is : [https://scancode-licensedb.aboutcode.org/{}] In a template URL, curly braces ({}) are replaced by the license key.

So, by default the license reference URL points to the LicenseDB page for that license.

A scan example using the --license-url-template TEXT option

scancode -clpieu --json-pp output.json samples --license-url-template https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/tree/develop/src/licensedcode/data/licenses/{}.LICENSE

In a normal scan, reference url for “ZLIB License” is as follows:

"reference_url": "https://scancode-licensedb.aboutcode.org/zlib",

After using the option in the following manner:

``--license-url-template https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/tree/develop/src/licensedcode/data/licenses/{}.LICENSE``

the reference URL changes to this zlib.LICENSE file:

"reference_url": "https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/blob/develop/src/licensedcode/data/licenses/zlib.LICENSE",

The reference URL changes for all detected licenses in the scan, across the scan result file.

--license-text-diagnostics Option

Dependency

The option --license-text-diagnostics is a sub-option of and requires the options --license and --license-text.

In the matched license text, include diagnostic highlights surrounding with square brackets [] words that are not matched.

In a normal scan, whole lines of text are included in the matched license text, including parts that are possibly unmatched.

An example Scan:

scancode -cplieu --json-pp output.json samples --license-text --license-text-diagnostics

Running a scan on the samples directory with --license-text --license-text-diagnostics options, causes the following difference in the scan result of the file samples/JGroups/licenses/bouncycastle.txt.

Without Diagnostics:

"matched_text":
"License Copyright (c) 2000 - 2006 The Legion Of The Bouncy Castle
(http://www.bouncycastle.org) 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

With Diagnostics on:

"matched_text":
"License [Copyright] ([c]) [2000] - [2006] [The] [Legion] [Of] [The] [Bouncy] [Castle]
([http]://[www].[bouncycastle].[org]) 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,

--license-diagnostics Option

Dependency

The option --license-diagnostics is a sub-option of and requires the option --license

On using the --license-diagnostics option on a license scan there is the detection_log attribute added to license detections with diagnostics information about the license detection post-processing steps which are used to create license detections from license matches.

Consider the following text:

## License
All code, unless stated otherwise, is dual-licensed under
[`WTFPL`](http://www.wtfpl.net/txt/copying/) and
[`MIT`](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).

If we run a license scan with the --license-diagnostics option enabled, we have the following license detection results:

{
    "path": "README.md",
    "type": "file",
    "detected_license_expression": "wtfpl-2.0 AND mit",
    "detected_license_expression_spdx": "WTFPL AND MIT",
    "license_detections": [
        {
            "license_expression": "wtfpl-2.0 AND mit",
            "matches": [
                {
                    "score": 100.0,
                    "start_line": 43,
                    "end_line": 43,
                    "matched_length": 3,
                    "match_coverage": 100.0,
                    "matcher": "2-aho",
                    "license_expression": "unknown-license-reference",
                    "rule_identifier": "lead-in_unknown_30.RULE",
                    "rule_relevance": 100,
                    "rule_url": "https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/tree/develop/src/licensedcode/data/rules/lead-in_unknown_30.RULE",
                    "matched_text": "dual-licensed under [`
                },
                {
                    "score": 50.0,
                    "start_line": 43,
                    "end_line": 43,
                    "matched_length": 1,
                    "match_coverage": 100.0,
                    "matcher": "2-aho",
                    "license_expression": "wtfpl-2.0",
                    "rule_identifier": "spdx_license_id_wtfpl_for_wtfpl-2.0.RULE",
                    "rule_relevance": 50,
                    "rule_url": "https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/tree/develop/src/licensedcode/data/rules/spdx_license_id_wtfpl_for_wtfpl-2.0.RULE",
                    "matched_text": "WTFPL"
                },
                {
                    "score": 100.0,
                    "start_line": 43,
                    "end_line": 43,
                    "matched_length": 3,
                    "match_coverage": 100.0,
                    "matcher": "2-aho",
                    "license_expression": "wtfpl-2.0",
                    "rule_identifier": "wtfpl-2.0_27.RULE",
                    "rule_relevance": 100,
                    "rule_url": "https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/tree/develop/src/licensedcode/data/rules/wtfpl-2.0_27.RULE",
                    "matched_text": "www.wtfpl.net/"
                },
                {
                    "score": 100.0,
                    "start_line": 43,
                    "end_line": 43,
                    "matched_length": 6,
                    "match_coverage": 100.0,
                    "matcher": "2-aho",
                    "license_expression": "mit",
                    "rule_identifier": "mit_64.RULE",
                    "rule_relevance": 100,
                    "rule_url": "https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/tree/develop/src/licensedcode/data/rules/mit_64.RULE",
                    "matched_text": "MIT`](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)."
                }
            ],
            "detection_log": [
                "unknown-intro-followed-by-match"
            ],
            "identifier": "wtfpl_2_0_and_mit-e5642b07-705c-9730-80ab-f5ed0565be28"
        }
    ],
    "license_clues": [],
    "percentage_of_license_text": 8.18,
    "scan_errors": []
}

Here from the "detection_log": ["unknown-intro-followed-by-match"] added diagnostics information we learn that there was an unknown intro license match, followed by proper detections, so we conclude the unknown intro to be an introduction to the following license and hence conclude the license from the license matches after the unknown detection.