Gradle License Plugin

This plugin provides a task to generate a HTML license report based on the configuration. (eg. licenseDebugReport for all debug dependencies in an Android project).

Applying this to an Android or Java project will generate the license file(open_source_licenses.html) in the <project>/build/reports/licenses/.

Also, for Android projects the license HTML file will be copied to <project>/src/main/assets/.

Compatibility Matrix

Plugin Version	Minimum Gradle Version	Minimum AGP Version
<= 0.9.4	<= 7.0.2	3.6.4+
0.9.5	7.0.2	3.6.4+
0.9.6	7.1.3	3.6.4+
0.9.7	7.2.2	3.6.4+

Download

Release:

with plugins { }

plugins {
  id('com.jaredsburrows.license') version '0.9.7'
}

with buildscript { }

buildscript {
  repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    google() // For Android projects
  }

  dependencies {
    classpath 'com.jaredsburrows:gradle-license-plugin:0.9.7'
  }
}

apply plugin: 'com.android.application' // or 'java-library'
apply plugin: 'com.jaredsburrows.license'

Release versions are available in the Sonatype's release repository and here.

Snapshot:

with plugins { }

plugins {
  id('com.jaredsburrows.license') version '0.9.8-SNAPSHOT'
}

with buildscript { }

buildscript {
  repositories {
    maven { url 'https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots' }
    google() // For Android projects
  }

  dependencies {
    classpath 'com.jaredsburrows:gradle-license-plugin:0.9.8-SNAPSHOT'
  }
}

apply plugin: 'com.android.application' // or 'java-library'
apply plugin: 'com.jaredsburrows.license'

Snapshot versions are available in the Sonatype's snapshots repository.

Tasks

license${variant}Report for Android
licenseReport for Java

Generates a HTML report of the all open source licenses. (eg. licenseDebugReport for all debug dependencies in an Android project).

Example build.gradle:

dependencies {
  implementation 'com.android.support:design:26.1.0'
  implementation 'pl.droidsonroids.gif:android-gif-drawable:1.2.3'
  implementation 'wsdl4j:wsdl4j:1.5.1' // Very old library with no license info available
}

Example Outputs:

CSV Example (full):

project,description,version,developers,url,year,licenses,license urls,dependency
Android GIF Drawable Library,Views and Drawable for displaying animated GIFs for Android,1.2.3,Karol WrÃ³tniak,https://github.com/koral--/android-gif-drawable,null,The MIT License,http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT,pl.droidsonroids.gif:android-gif-drawable:1.2.3
design,null,26.1.0,null,null,null,The Apache Software License,http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt,com.android.support:design:26.1.0

HTML Example (license descriptions are minimized):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
    <style>body { font-family: sans-serif } pre { background-color: #eeeeee; padding: 1em; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-word; display: inline-block }</style>
    <title>Open source licenses</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h3>Notice for packages:</h3>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="#1934118923">design (26.1.0)</a>
        <dl>
          <dt>Copyright &copy; 20xx The original author or authors</dt>
          <dd></dd>
        </dl>
      </li>
    </ul>
    <a id="1934118923"></a>
    <pre>apache-2.0.txt here</pre>
    <br>
    <hr>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="#1783810846">Android GIF Drawable Library (1.2.3)</a>
        <dl>
          <dt>Copyright &copy; 20xx Karol WrXXtniak</dt>
          <dd></dd>
        </dl>
      </li>
    </ul>
    <a id="1783810846"></a>
    <pre>apache-2.0.txt here</pre>
    <br>
    <hr>
  </body>
</html>

Note, if no license information is found in the POM for a project, "No License Found" will be used. Those will be listed first. Other missing information is provided as default values that can be corrected from other sources. Projects are grouped by license name and the license text is only provided once. Projects with multiple licenses are grouped as if those licenses were a single combined license.

JSON Example (full):

[
  {
    "project":"Android GIF Drawable Library",
    "description":"Views and Drawable for displaying animated GIFs for Android",
    "version":"1.2.3",
    "developers":[
      "Karol Wr\\u00c3\\u00b3tniak"
    ],
    "url":"https://github.com/koral--/android-gif-drawable",
    "year":null,
    "licenses":[
      {
        "license":"The MIT License",
        "license_url":"http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT"
      }
    ],
    "dependency":"pl.droidsonroids.gif:android-gif-drawable:1.2.3"
  },
  {
    "project":"design",
    "description":null,
    "version":"26.1.0",
    "developers":[],
    "url":null,
    "year":null,
    "licenses":[
      {
        "license":"The Apache Software License",
        "license_url":"http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt"
      }
    ],
    "dependency":"com.android.support:design:26.1.0"
  }
]

Note, if no license information is found for a component, the licenses element in the JSON output will be an empty array.

Text Example (full):

Notice for packages


Android GIF Drawable Library (1.2.3) - The MIT License
Views and Drawable for displaying animated GIFs for Android
https://github.com/koral--/android-gif-drawable

design (26.1.0) - The Apache Software License

Configuration

The plugin can be configured to generate specific reports and automatically copy the reports to the assets directory (Android projects only). The default behaviours are:

Java projects: Generate HTML, JSON and CSV reports.
Android projects: Generate HTML, JSON and CSV reports, and copy the HTML report to the assets directory.

The plugin can be configured to ignore licenses for certain artifact patterns. The default is that nothing is ignored.

To override the defaults, add the licenseReport configuration closure to the build script.

apply plugin: "com.jaredsburrows.license"

licenseReport {
  generateCsvReport = false
  generateHtmlReport = true
  generateJsonReport = false
  generateTextReport = false
  ignoredPatterns = []

  // These options are ignored for Java projects
  copyCsvReportToAssets = false
  copyHtmlReportToAssets = true
  copyJsonReportToAssets = false
  copyTextReportToAssets = false
  useVariantSpecificAssetDirs = false
}

The copyHtmlReportToAssets option in the above example would have no effect since the HTML report is disabled.

The useVariantSpecificAssetDirs allows the reports to be copied into the source set asset directory of the variant. For example, licensePaidProductionReleaseReport would put the reports in src/paidProductionRelease/assets. They are copied into src/main/assets by default.

The ignoredPatterns allows for ignoring artifact patterns. These can be partial or full patterns.

apply plugin: "com.jaredsburrows.license"

licenseReport {
  ignoredPatterns = ["com.some.group"] // Ignores all artifacts of the given group
  ignoredPatterns = ["com.some.group:some.name"] // Ignores the given artifact regardless of version
  ignoredPatterns = ["com.some.group:some.name:1.2.3"] // Ignores the given artifact with the given version
}

Usage Example

Create an open source dialog

Kotlin

import android.annotation.SuppressLint
import android.app.AlertDialog
import android.app.Dialog
import android.content.DialogInterface
import android.os.Bundle
import android.webkit.WebView
import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity
import androidx.fragment.app.DialogFragment

class OpenSourceLicensesDialog : DialogFragment() {

  @SuppressLint("CommitTransaction")
  fun showLicenses(activity: AppCompatActivity) {
    val fragmentManager = activity.supportFragmentManager
    val fragmentTransaction = fragmentManager.beginTransaction()
    val previousFragment = fragmentManager.findFragmentByTag("dialog_licenses")
    if (previousFragment != null) {
      fragmentTransaction.remove(previousFragment)
    }
    fragmentTransaction.addToBackStack(null)

    show(fragmentManager, "dialog_licenses")
  }

  override fun onCreateDialog(savedInstanceState: Bundle?): Dialog {
    val webView = WebView(requireActivity())
    webView.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/open_source_licenses.html")

    return AlertDialog.Builder(requireActivity())
      .setTitle("Open Source Licenses")
      .setView(webView)
      .setPositiveButton("OK"
      ) { dialog: DialogInterface, _: Int -> dialog.dismiss() }
      .create()
  }
}

Java

import android.annotation.SuppressLint;
import android.app.Dialog;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.webkit.WebView;

import androidx.annotation.Nullable;
import androidx.appcompat.app.AlertDialog;
import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;
import androidx.fragment.app.DialogFragment;
import androidx.fragment.app.Fragment;
import androidx.fragment.app.FragmentManager;
import androidx.fragment.app.FragmentTransaction;

public final class OpenSourceLicensesDialog extends DialogFragment {

  @SuppressLint("CommitTransaction")
  public void showLicenses(AppCompatActivity activity) {
    FragmentManager fragmentManager = activity.getSupportFragmentManager();
    FragmentTransaction fragmentTransaction = fragmentManager.beginTransaction();
    Fragment previousFragment = fragmentManager.findFragmentByTag("dialog_licenses");
    if (previousFragment != null) {
      fragmentTransaction.remove(previousFragment);
    }
    fragmentTransaction.addToBackStack(null);

    show(fragmentManager, "dialog_licenses");
  }

  @Override
  public Dialog onCreateDialog(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    WebView webView = new WebView(requireActivity());
    webView.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/open_source_licenses.html");

    return new AlertDialog.Builder(requireActivity())
      .setTitle("Open Source Licenses")
      .setView(webView)
      .setPositiveButton("OK", (dialog, which) -> dialog.dismiss())
      .create();
  }
}

How to use it

Kotlin

OpenSourceLicensesDialog().showLicenses(this)

Java

new OpenSourceLicensesDialog().showLicenses(this);

Source: https://github.com/google/iosched/blob/2531cbdbe27e5795eb78bf47d27e8c1be494aad4/android/src/main/java/com/google/samples/apps/iosched/util/AboutUtils.java#L52

Source: https://www.bignerdranch.com/blog/open-source-licenses-and-android/

License

Copyright (C) 2016 Jared Burrows

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

Gradle License Plugin

General

Additional

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Gradle License Plugin

Compatibility Matrix

Download

Tasks

Example Outputs:

Configuration

Usage Example

Create an open source dialog

How to use it

License