A CLI and code library to generate a text file containing all of the licenses for your production third-party dependencies.

npm install generate-license-file --save-dev

npx generate-license-file --input package.json --output third-party-licenses.txt --overwrite

If either the --input or --output are omitted the CLI will prompt you for their values.

For a full description of the CLI arguments and their usages please see the relevant docs page.

npm install generate-license-file --save-dev

import { generateLicenseFile, getLicenseFileText, getProjectLicenses } from "generate-license-file";

// Generate the license file and write it to disk.
await generateLicenseFile("./package.json", "./third-party-licenses.txt");

// Generate the license file content and return it as a string.
const licenseFileText: string = await getLicenseFileText("./package.json");

// Get an array of objects each containing the details of an
// identified license and the dependencies it pertains to.
const licenses: ILicense[] = await getProjectLicenses("./package.json");

For a full description of the library API and example usages please see the relevant docs page.

Advanced configuration of the generated output can be done using a configuration file. In addition to the basic CLI arguments, a configuration file allows you to specify appendices, exclusions, and replacements.

Config files can be called either .glf or .generatelicensefile and can be customised using the following options:

• File name can optionally end with rc
• Can be in a ./.config directory (no longer needs the . prefix on the file name)
• Have the following file extensions: .json, jsonc, .json5, .yaml, .yml, .js, .cjs

E.g. .glf.json, .glfrc.yml, .generatelicensefile.jsonc, .config/glf.js, and more.

{
  // Default config - can be passed in via config and/or CLI
  "inputs": ["./package.json"],
  "output": "./third-party-licenses.txt",
  "lineEnding": "lf",

  // Paths to any file's whose content will be appended to the end of the generated file.
  "append": ["./additional-content.txt"],

  // Substitute the given packages license with the content in the respective file.
  "replace": {
    "replaced-package@4.33.1": "./bespoke-license.txt",
    "another-replaced-package": "./bespoke-license-2.txt"
  },

  // Exclude any packages from the output.
  "exclude": ["my-package@1.2.0"],
  
  // Omit the version number in the output file
  "omitVersion": false
}

If you want to call your config file something else then you can pass it to the CLI via the --config argument:

npx generate-license-file --config ./my-config.json

generate-license-file is an NX Monorepo. We have aliased common commands in the scripts section of the src/package.json to make working with the project easier.

Each package in the monorepo (under src/packages/) contains a README with further information. The main library and CLI is under packages/generate-license-file.

# cwd: src/

npm run lint

npm run test  # unit tests

npm run test:e2e  # e2e tests

npm run build  # will build all packages into src/dist/[package name]

generate-license-file is licensed under the ISC License.