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Re: ITP of leancrypto and its debian/copyright

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On 25/07/2025 09:03, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Working on 'leancrypto' packaging (which now build! see salsa pipeline
> below) made me consider life choices wrt debian/copyright.
> 
> For several of my packages, I use 'lrc' to audit that debian/copyright
> file matches what 'licensecheck' thinks the license of files are.
> 
> But what is the best tool to GENERATE a debian/copyright in a package
> with 1500+ files with different copyright and license information?

Best tool at parsing individual text files is definitely licensecheck.

It doesn't reconcile against the existing d/copyright and doesn't group 
years very well. And doesn't ignore known files (.git, COPYING, etc...) 
with certain args. And doesn't handle binary files gracefully.
Still, excellent recognition of license/copyright on text files.

> I have heard about 'clscan' but using it does not seem straightforward
> to use, or at least I didn't understand how to use it.  Are there any
> gentle introductions to it?
> 
> I expect a tool to be able to either CREATE a template debian/copyright
> or UPDATE an existing debian/copyright (made from an earlier template)
> by searching through the content of a directory.

decopy reconciles against existing d/copyright, but recognises a limited 
set of licenses and they have to be cleanly written.
Handles mimetypes and checks images/fonts/pdfs/etc through exiftool though.

> A tool like that doesn't feel like rocket science these days.
> 
> Could someone summarize the alternatives and share their experience with
> some of them?

I start by looking at the output of:
- `licensecheck --deb-machine --recursive .`
- `decopy`

Compare and see which one looks more accurate. You'll probably have to 
do a lot of cleanup, globbing and grouping.

Neither will be usable as-is since upstream attached their copyright and 
disclaimer only to every file. And I think upstream is dual licensed to 
begin with, so tools won't recognise that.

Alternatively, since upstream tracks 3rd party licenses in their LICENSE 
file, I would consider the manual route if that information is accurate 
enough.



> /Simon
> 
> Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> writes:
> 
>> Packaging is materializing here:
>>
>> https://salsa.debian.org/debian/leancrypto/
>>
>> Automating debian/copyright generation somehow would help.
> 
> /Simon

-- 
Regards,
Ahmad

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Thread

ITP of leancrypto and its debian/copyright Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> - 2025-07-25 10:10 +0200
  Re: ITP of leancrypto and its debian/copyright Jérémy Lal <kapouer@melix.org> - 2025-07-25 10:20 +0200
    Re: ITP of leancrypto and its debian/copyright Peter B <peter@pblackman.plus.com> - 2025-07-25 10:50 +0200
      Re: ITP of leancrypto and its debian/copyright Andreas Metzler <ametzler@bebt.de> - 2025-07-26 07:20 +0200
  Re: ITP of leancrypto and its debian/copyright Ahmad Khalifa <ahmad@khalifa.ws> - 2025-07-25 17:30 +0200

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