pip-licenses

Dump the software license list of Python packages installed with pip.

Table of Contents

• Description
• Installation
• Usage
• Command-Line Options
  • Common options
    • Option: python
    • Option: from
    • Option: order
    • Option: format
      • Markdown
      • reST
      • Confluence
      • HTML
      • JSON
      • JSON LicenseFinder
      • CSV
      • Plain Vertical
    • Option: summary
    • Option: output-file
    • Option: ignore-packages
    • Option: packages
  • Format options
    • Option: with-system
    • Option: with-authors
    • Option: with-maintainers
    • Option: with-urls
    • Option: with-description
    • Option: no-version
    • Option: with-license-file
    • Option: filter-strings
    • Option: filter-code-page
  • Verify options
    • Option: fail-on
    • Option: allow-only
    • Option: partial-match
  • pyproject.toml support
  • More Information
• Dockerfile
• About UnicodeEncodeError
• License
  • Dependencies
• Uninstallation
• Contributing

Description

pip-licenses is a CLI tool for checking the software license of installed Python packages with pip.

Implemented with the idea inspired by composer licenses command in Composer (a.k.a PHP package management tool).

https://getcomposer.org/doc/03-cli.md#licenses

Installation

Install it via PyPI using pip command.

# Install or Upgrade to newest available version
$ pip install -U pip-licenses

# If upgrading from pip-licenses 3.x, remove PTable
$ pip uninstall -y PTable

Note for Python 3.7 users: pip-licenses 4.x discontinued support earlier than the Python 3.7 EOL schedule. If you want to use it with Python 3.7, install pip-licenses 3.x.

# Using old version for the Python 3.7 environment
$ pip install 'pip-licenses<4.0'

Note: If you are still using Python 2.7, install version less than 2.0. No new features will be provided for version 1.x.

$ pip install 'pip-licenses<2.0'

Usage

Execute the command with your venv (or virtualenv) environment.

# Install packages in your venv environment
(venv) $ pip install Django pip-licenses

# Check the licenses with your venv environment
(venv) $ pip-licenses
 Name    Version  License
 Django  2.0.2    BSD
 pytz    2017.3   MIT

Command-Line Options

Common options

Option: python

By default, this tools finds the packages from the environment pip-licenses is launched from, by searching in current python's sys.path folders. In the case you want to search for packages in an other environment (e.g. if you want to run pip-licenses from its own isolated environment), you can specify a path to a python executable. The packages will be searched for in the given python's sys.path, free of pip-licenses dependencies.

(venv) $ pip-licenses --with-system | grep pip
 pip                       22.3.1       MIT License
 pip-licenses              4.1.0        MIT License

(venv) $ pip-licenses --python=</path/to/other/env>/bin/python --with-system | grep pip
 pip                       23.0.1       MIT License 

Option: from

By default, this tool finds the license from Trove Classifiers or package Metadata. Some Python packages declare their license only in Trove Classifiers.

(See also): Set license to MIT in setup.py by alisianoi ・ Pull Request #1058 ・ pypa/setuptools, PEP 314#License

For example, even if you check with the pip show command, the license is displayed as UNKNOWN.

(venv) $ pip show setuptools
Name: setuptools
Version: 38.5.0
Summary: Easily download, build, install, upgrade, and uninstall Python packages
Home-page: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools
Author: Python Packaging Authority
Author-email: distutils-sig@python.org
License: UNKNOWN

The mixed mode (--from=mixed) of this tool works well and looks for licenses.

(venv) $ pip-licenses --from=mixed --with-system | grep setuptools
 setuptools    38.5.0   MIT License

In mixed mode, it first tries to look for licenses in the Trove Classifiers. When not found in the Trove Classifiers, the license declared in Metadata is displayed.

If you want to look only in metadata, use --from=meta. If you want to look only in Trove Classifiers, use --from=classifier.

To list license information from both metadata and classifier, use --from=all.

Note: If neither can find license information, please check with the with-authors and with-urls options and contact the software author.

• The m keyword is prepared as alias of meta.
• The c keyword is prepared as alias of classifier.
• The mix keyword is prepared as alias of mixed.
  • Default behavior in this tool

Option: order

By default, it is ordered by package name.

If you give arguments to the --order option, you can output in other sorted order.

(venv) $ pip-licenses --order=license

Option: format

By default, it is output to the plain format.

Markdown

When executed with the --format=markdown option, you can output list in markdown format. The m md keyword is prepared as alias of markdown.

(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=markdown
| Name   | Version | License |
|--------|---------|---------|
| Django | 2.0.2   | BSD     |
| pytz   | 2017.3  | MIT     |

When inserted in a markdown document, it is rendered as follows:

Name	Version	License
Django	2.0.2	BSD
pytz	2017.3	MIT

reST

When executed with the --format=rst option, you can output list in "Grid tables" of reStructuredText format. The r rest keyword is prepared as alias of rst.

(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=rst
+--------+---------+---------+
| Name   | Version | License |
+--------+---------+---------+
| Django | 2.0.2   | BSD     |
+--------+---------+---------+
| pytz   | 2017.3  | MIT     |
+--------+---------+---------+

Confluence

When executed with the --format=confluence option, you can output list in Confluence (or JIRA) Wiki markup format. The c keyword is prepared as alias of confluence.

(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=confluence
| Name   | Version | License |
| Django | 2.0.2   | BSD     |
| pytz   | 2017.3  | MIT     |

HTML

When executed with the --format=html option, you can output list in HTML table format. The h keyword is prepared as alias of html.

(venv) $ pip-licenses --format=html
<table>
    <tr>
        <th>Name</th>
        <th>Version</th>
        <th>License</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Django</td>
        <td>2.0.2</td>
        <td>BSD</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>pytz</td>
        <td>2017.3</td>
        <td>MIT</td>
    </tr>
</table>

JSON

When executed with the --format=json option, you can output list in JSON format easily allowing post-processing. The j keyword is prepared as alias of json.

[
  {
    "Author": "Django Software Foundation",
    "License": "BSD",
    "Name": "Django",
    "URL": "https://www.djangoproject.com/",
    "Version": "2.0.2"
  },
  {
    "Author": "Stuart Bishop",
    "License": "MIT",
    "Name": "pytz",
    "URL": "http://pythonhosted.org/pytz",
    "Version": "2017.3"
  }
]

JSON LicenseFinder

When executed with the --format=json-license-finder option, you can output list in JSON format that is identical to LicenseFinder. The jlf keyword is prepared as alias of jlf. This makes pip-licenses a drop-in replacement for LicenseFinder.