Bug#960681: Bug#513967:l icensecheck: fails to detect license at end (option --tail is broken)

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Control: affects -1 =

Quoting Dominique Dumont (2021-11-19 18:06:00)
> Indeed. I have a similar case with #1000179 where licensecheck does 
> not get copyright assignment from a LICENSE file:
> 
> $ licensecheck --copyright LICENSE 
> LICENSE: *No copyright* Apache License 2.0
> 
> But it gets the copyright with --lines option:
> 
> $ licensecheck --copyright LICENSE -l 0
> LICENSE: Apache License 2.0
>   [Copyright: patent, trademark, and / license to reproduce, prepare 
> Derivative Works of, / License. Subject to the terms and conditions of / 2017 
> Sourced Technologies S.L.]

The issue tracked here as bug#513967 is failure to continue scanning at 
bottom when *nothing* is detected at top.

What you present here, Dominique, is not a bug but a feature: By default 
(and whenever option --lines is non-zero) licensecheck sloppily stops 
scanning at first chunk of license or copyright found, hoping all 
information is kept close together.

This was not clearly documented, but has always been how the code works 
(and documentation never promised something else either).

Next release will have improved documentation, saying this:

> number of bytes to parse from bottom of each file
> when parsing only from top of each file and finding nothing there;
> set to 0 to avoid parsing from end of file
> (or set --lines to 0 and ignore this setting)

If you don't want sloppy scanning, then you will need to accept that it 
takes longer time, using "--lines=0".

If you think licensecheck should be slightly less sloppy by stopping 
only when both *some* license and *some* copyright holder is detected, 
then please file a separate wishlist bugreport about that.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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