Orestis Ioannou: Using debsources API to determine the license of foo.bar
Following up on the hack of Matthieu - A one-liner to catch'em all! - and the recent features of Debsources I got the idea to modify a bit the one liner in order to retrieve the license of foo.bar.
The script will calculate the SHA256 hash of the file and then query the Debsources API in order to retrieve the license of that particular file.
Save the following in a file as license-of and add it in your $PATH
#!/bin/bash
function license-of
readlink -f $1 xargs dpkg-query --search awk -F ": " ' print $1 ' xargs apt-cache showsrc grep-dctrl -s 'Package' -n '' awk -v sha="$(sha256sum $1 awk ' print $1 ')" -F " " ' print "https://sources.debian.net/copyright/api/sha256/?checksum="sha"&packagename="$1"" ' xargs curl -sS
CMD="$1"
license-of $ CMD
Then you can try something like:
license-of /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/exceptions.pyNotes:
- if the checksum is not found in the DB (compiled file, modified file, not part of any package) this will fail
- if the debian/copyright file of the specific package is not machine readable then you are out of luck!
- if there are more than 1 versions of the package you will get all the available information. If you want to get just testing then add "&suite=testing" after the &packagename="$1" in the debsources link.
My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for 
For the concrete work I did during DebConf, I can only claim two schroot uploads to fix the lack of support of the new overlay filesystem that replaces aufs in the official Debian kernel, and some Distro Tracker work (fixing an issue that some people had when they were logged in via Debian s SSO).
While the numerous discussions I had during DebConf can t be qualified as work , they certainly contribute to build up work plans for the future:
As a Kali developer, I attended multiple sessions related to derivatives (notably the 
Most of the functionalities of the copyright tracker are already merged. Specifically navigating in the tracker, rendering the machine readable licenses, API functionalities such as obtaining the license of a file searching by checksum or by a package / version / path or obtaining the licenses of many files at once and their respective views.
Some more functionalities are still under review such as filling the database with copyright related information at update time, using the database to answer the aforementioned requests, license statistics in the spirit of the 
TDD
I have finally understood why test driven development is so powerful. As i am advancing in the project i am sometimes obliged to retouch some areas, refactor pieces of code. Having a great test suite that keeps you on track about the changes, and possible outages in advance is pretty powerful.
What is coming
I feel the project is on the right path. Both clemux (fellow gsoc student working on debsources) and me are advancing in a productive pace. I hope that soon enough the copyright Blueprint will be completed (most notable pending functionalities are the plugins-hooks to mine the licenses at update time, introduction of at least another license oracle possible ninka, statistics) so that everyone can take profit of the new tools provided by DebSources.
Although we haven't talked much about it the patch tracker should also come into the play sooner rather than later.
Stay tuned!
TDD
I have finally understood why test driven development is so powerful. As i am advancing in the project i am sometimes obliged to retouch some areas, refactor pieces of code. Having a great test suite that keeps you on track about the changes, and possible outages in advance is pretty powerful.
What is coming
I feel the project is on the right path. Both clemux (fellow gsoc student working on debsources) and me are advancing in a productive pace. I hope that soon enough the copyright Blueprint will be completed (most notable pending functionalities are the plugins-hooks to mine the licenses at update time, introduction of at least another license oracle possible ninka, statistics) so that everyone can take profit of the new tools provided by DebSources.
Although we haven't talked much about it the patch tracker should also come into the play sooner rather than later.
Stay tuned!