NAME

       licensecheck - simple license checker for source files

SYNOPSIS

       licensecheck --help|--version

       licensecheck [--no-conf] [--verbose] [--copyright] [-l|--lines=N] [-i|--ignore=regex] [-c|--check=regex]
       [-m|--machine] [-r|--recursive]  [-e|--encoding=...]  list of files and directories to check

DESCRIPTION

       licensecheck attempts to determine the license that applies to each file passed to it, by searching the
       start of the file for text belonging to various licenses.

       If any of the arguments passed are directories, licensecheck will add the files contained within to the
       list of files to process.

OPTIONS

       --verbose, --no-verbose
           Specify  whether  to  output the text being processed from each file before the corresponding license
           information.

           Default is to be quiet.

       -l=N, --lines=N
           Specify the number of lines of each file's header which should be  parsed  for  license  information.
           (Default is 60).

       --tail=N
           By  default,  the last 5k bytes of each files are parsed to get license information. You may use this
           option to set the size of this parsed chunk.  You may set this value to 0 to avoid parsing the end of
           the file.

       -i=regex, --ignore=regex
           When processing the list of files and directories, the regular expression specified  by  this  option
           will be used to indicate those which should not be considered (e.g. backup files, VCS metadata).

       -r, --recursive
           Specify that the contents of directories should be added recursively.

       -c=regex, --check=regex
           Specify a pattern against which filenames will be matched in order to decide which files to check the
           license of.

           The default includes common source files.

       -s, --skipped
           Specify  whether  to  show  skipped  files, i.e. files found which do not match the check regexp (see
           "--check" option). Default is to not show skipped files.

           Note that ignored files (like ".git" or ".svn") are not shown even when this option is used.

       --copyright
           Also display copyright text found within the file

       -e --encoding
           Specifies input encoding of source files. By default, input files are not decoded. When  encoding  is
           specified, license and copyright information are printed on STDOUT as utf8, or garbage if you got the
           encoding wrong.

       -m, --machine
           Display     the    information    in    a    machine    readable    way,    i.e.    in    the    form
           <file><tab><license>[<tab><copyright>] so that it can be easily sorted and/or filtered, e.g. with the
           awk and sort commands.  Note that using the --verbose option will kill the readability.

       --no-conf, --noconf
           Do not read any configuration files. This can only be used as the first option given on  the  command
           line.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

       The  two  configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and ~/.devscripts are sourced by a shell in that order
       to set configuration variables.  Command  line  options  can  be  used  to  override  configuration  file
       settings.   Environment  variable  settings  are  ignored  for  this  purpose.   The currently recognised
       variables are:

       LICENSECHECK_VERBOSE
           If this is set to yes, then it is the same as the --verbose command line parameter  being  used.  The
           default is no.

       LICENSECHECK_PARSELINES
           If this is set to a positive number then the specified number of lines at the start of each file will
           be  read  whilst  attempting  to  determine the license(s) in use.  This is equivalent to the --lines
           command line option.

LICENSE

       This code is copyright by Adam D. Barratt <adam@adam-barratt.org.uk>, all rights  reserved;  based  on  a
       script  of  the  same  name from the KDE SDK, which is copyright by <dfaure@kde.org>.  This program comes
       with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  You are free to redistribute this code under the terms of the  GNU  General
       Public License, version 2 or later.

AUTHOR

       Adam D. Barratt <adam@adam-barratt.org.uk>

Debian Utilities                                   2016-03-23                                    LICENSECHECK(1)