CLI Licence checker for composer dependencies

This library offers a simple CLI tool to show the licenses used by composer dependencies in your project. These licenses can be be verified against a list of allowed licenses to offer a way for your continuous integration pipeline to block merging when a non-verified license is being introduced to the codebase.

Installation

Installing should be a breeze thanks to composer: Note that you need PHP 8 to install the latest version (1.x). If you are using an older version of PHP (7.x), older versions can be installed (0.x).

composer require madewithlove/license-checker

Configuration

To configure a list of allowed licenses, simply create an .allowed-licences file in the root of your project (where composer.json is located). The file could look like this:

# contents of .allowed-licenses
- MIT
- BSD-3-Clause
- New BSD License

It's possible to use a custom configuration file by passing the --filename (or -f) option to the CLI commands.

Usage

These are the different CLI commands

List used licenses

vendor/bin/license-checker used

List allowed licenses

vendor/bin/license-checker allowed

Check licenses

vendor/bin/license-checker check

Automatically generate configuration

This command will automatically generate an .allowed-licenses configuration based on the currently used licenses.

vendor/bin/license-checker generate-config

Excluding development dependencies

Passing the --no-dev option to the CLI commands will scope all checks to production dependencies only. Checking production and development dependencies against separate configuration files is possible by passing options:

vendor/bin/license-checker check --no-dev --filename .allowed-licenses-production
vendor/bin/license-checker check --filename .allowed-licenses-including-dev