If there is a requirement that a NOTICE file exists then there are probably other projects that have requirements for other files to exist. Perhaps we need a way to specify that specific file patterns must exist.
We could add: - --require-file-literal to exclude literal file name (e.g. "AUTHOR.TXT") - --require-file-wildcard to exclude files based on file wildcards (e.g. "AUTHOR.*") - --require-file-regex to exclude files based on regular expressions (e.g. "AUTHORS?(\.[Tt][Xx][Tt])?" - --require-contents-literal to exclude files based on a literal match to text in the file. - --require-contents-regex to exclude files based on a regular expression match to text in the file. - --require-source to exclude files and directories based on the input of a file. Multiple file structures could be accepted but in general it has a flag for the file/contents dichotomy and the literal/wildcard/regex trichotomy. For example: file:literal:AUTHOR.TXT or <contents><literal>Generated by</literal></contents> - --no-default-require to remove any required files that are included by default. We can add options to the configuration XML to provide a default mechanism to do complex exclude / require operations in a way that is portable across build systems. In this case --exclude-source and --require-source are not required. Currently the configuration system supports multiple configuration file formats [1] , though only XML is implemented, though commons-configuration files, or yaml files might be reasonable implementations. Now that I think about it, a pom.xml parser might be a way to solve some issues with the Maven plugin. [1] https://github.com/apache/creadur-rat/blob/master/apache-rat-core/src/main/java/org/apache/rat/configuration/Format.java On Sun, May 5, 2024 at 4:02 PM P. Ottlinger <pottlin...@apache.org> wrote: > Hi, > > Am 05.05.24 um 08:52 schrieb Claude Warren: > > *Current state* > > > > We attempt to provide a default configuration that is ASF requirements > > based. > > > > We currently categorize documents into one of six categories: Generated, > > Unknown, Archive, Notice, Binary, Standard. > > > > - Standard documents get scanned for the presence or absence of > license > > headers. > > - Archive documents may get scanned for the presence or absence of > > license headers. > > - Notice files are determined by file name [1] and are excluded from > > processing > > If I'm not mistaken the special handling for NOTICE files was introduced > as there is a requirement to include these files into a JAR. > > Personally I wouldn't mind your changes as I never understood the > special handling, but downstream users might use RAT's classification to > ensure that a NOTICE file exists .... > > Cheers, > Phil > -- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/claudewarren
