*Design proposal*
*Introduction*
RAT 0.17 was just released and we have several issues newly opened. In
addition, there are several older issues that will require large scale
changes. This proposal is intended to open discussion concerning the
direction of development for RAT, and how to address the general categories
of issues.
The changes cover a couple of broad areas. Some changes are fairly simple
and can be easily implemented against the 0.17 codebase. Others require a
much deeper change.
I believe that we should maintain two working branches for a short time:
“0.18-SNAPSHOT” so that bug fixes can be released, and 1.0.0-FEATURE on
which to do the longer term development. This support of two branches will
only be maintained until 1.0.0 is released.
I have listed the general broad areas below as well as what version (0.18,
1.0.0, 1.0.0+) I think the changes should be made on. 1.0.0+ indicates
1.0.0 or later.
Since access to Jira is restricted, I suggest that discussions about these
components be carried out on the mailing list, with final decisions posted
into Jira. If anyone has a better solution to allow people without Jira
access to contribute please speak up.
*Code Cleanup*
The code base contains a number of bad practices that have been identified
but were deemed not suitable for 0.17 release. These include
-
RAT-465 – remove deprecated code (1.0.0)
-
RAT-498 – Dependency Updates (1.0.0)
-
RAT-442 – migrate to Commons-cli 1.10.0 (0.18)
-
RAT-452 – remove ExtendedIterator when Commons-collection 4.5.0 is
available. (0.18)
-
RAT-449 – remove Plexus code when 4.0.3 or upstream contributions are
added. (0.18)
-
RAT-350 – remove javadoc errors (1.0.0)
-
RAT-478 – Drop Java8 build support. (1.0.0)
-
RAT-443 – remove package cycles (1.0.0)
-
RAT-404 – create SAXON Xslt processor. (0.18)
-
RAT-403 – remove AbstractReport (1.0.0)
-
RAT-459 – cleanup report generation (1.0.0)
-
RAT-401 – rework IdocumentAnalyzer and RatReport into single class
(1.0.0)
-
RAT-407 – move HeaderCheckerWorker code into documentHeaderAnalyzer.
(1.0.0)
*Pluggable Architecture*
We have moved to a mostly pluggable architecture. There are some additional
components for and fixes to the current architecture.
-
Pluggable Include/Exclude processors
-
RAT-352 – define a .ratignore file and processor (0.18)
-
Pluggable UI
-
RAT-163 – Add Gradle Plugin (0.18)
-
Clean up Maven UI
-
RAT-508 – RAT logs too much at INFO level in Maven. (0.18)
-
Pluggable scanners: Currently RAT scans for license headers. This is a
scanner capability. The addition of new scanners will mean that the
include/exclude processing will need to be executed before each processor
and then the processor executed. The processor will need to be able to
report into a common metadata structure that can be used to generate a
common XML. This common processing framework will need to be developed.
However, there are points in the current RAT code where new processors
could be added. The first new processor will bring with it a lot of newish
code. Many of the processors specified below could be implemented as
adapters to other libraries.
-
RAT-461 – create a notice processor (1.0.0+)
-
RAT-388 – replace hardcoded NOTICE category (1.0.0+)
-
RAT-51 – check for crypto jar inclusion (1.0.0+)
-
RAT-45 – copy and replace detection tool (1.0.0+)
-
RAT-25 – add checksum and similar checks on final build products.
(1.0.0+)
-
RAT-389 – move Add header functionality into a separate tool (1.0.0)
-
RAT-4 – check known license requirements for code against notice
files. (1.0.0+)
-
RAT-334 – option to verify notice file. (1.0.0+)
-
RAT-5 – check copyright dates.(1.0.0+)
-
Plugable editors: RAT currently has one editor; it can add headers to
some file types. This change is to move editors into their own category of
pluggable components. This will allow users to easily prohibit updating any
files within the RAT run, by turning off all editor components at once.
Otherwise, these tools will probably use much of the pluggable scanners
framework.
-
RAT-463 – rework header editing. (1.0.0)
-
RAT-351 – automatic code formatters (1.0.0+)
*General*
These are items that we need to fix but did not fit into one of the other
categories. Unless otherwise noted these are to be fixed in 0.18.
-
RAT-462 – scan images for licensing information.
-
RAT-508 – RAT logs too much at INFO level in Maven.
-
RAT-476 – Include/Exclude precedence
-
RAT-509 – gitignore rules mixed with RAT include/exclude rules.
-
RAT-395 – Add HTML Report
-
RAT-512 – PDF Files fail the check.
-
RAT-511 – some tar.gz files not read.
-
RAT-460 – Add additional license definitions
