A plugin for IntelliJ IDEA for managing licenses and detecting license incompatibilities. Sorrel allows to work with the licenses of Java projects right inside IntelliJ IDEA.
The plugin can:
- Detect and recognize the licenses of project modules.
- Detect and recognize the licenses of project libraries.
- Detect incompatibilities between licenses in the project.
- Suggest a project license that will be compatible with all the project's libraries.
- Visualize all the licensing information inside the IDE and provide convenient features for managing licenses.
You can learn more in the demonstration video.
The plugin is currently in development, so the first version will be coming soon to the Marketplace.
You can install the plugin in IntelliJ IDEA as follows:
- Download the latest build of the Sorrel plugin.
- In the IDE, go to
File-Settings-Plugins- ⚙️ -Install from disk, and select the plugin zip. - Restart the IDE.
Sorrel requires IntelliJ IDEA in the version range from 2021.1 to 2021.3.1.
Sorrel currently supports 16 most popular open-source licenses. A trained machine learning model (ML) and the Sørensen-Dice coefficient (DSC) are used to detect 12 licenses. The remaining four licenses are detected using only the Sørensen-Dice coefficient. Supported licenses and detection methods are showed in the table below.
| License | Detecting method |
|---|---|
| GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 only | ML + DSC |
| Apache License 2.0 | ML + DSC |
| BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License | ML + DSC |
| BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License | ML + DSC |
| Common Development and Distribution License 1.0 | DSC |
| Eclipse Public License 1.0 | DSC |
| GNU General Public License v2.0 only | ML + DSC |
| GNU General Public License v2.0 with classpath exception | DSC |
| GNU General Public License v3.0 only | ML + DSC |
| ISC License | ML + DSC |
| GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 only | ML + DSC |
| GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only | ML + DSC |
| MIT License | ML + DSC |
| Mozilla Public License 1.1 | DSC |
| Mozilla Public License 2.0 | ML + DSC |
| Do What The F*** You Want To Public License | ML + DSC |
Sorrel provides the user with a graphical interface for the convenience of managing licenses. The main graphical interface of the plugin is the Tool Window. The window contains two tabs and provides the information about all the licenses in the project. The first tab is called Project License and is presented below. It contains the information about the detected main license of the project (root module), its description (permissions, limitations, and conditions), as well as a list of detected potential license violations. From this tab, the user also can export a JSON report with all the data.
The second tab is called Package Licenses and is presented below. This tab contains the information about all the licenses of libraries used inside project, it supports a search among all the libraries and filtering by modules.
In addition to the Tool Window, the plugin provides the License Editor Notification panel, presented below. This panel appears at the top of the editor when the module license is opened in it. The panel allows the user to change the license in several simple clicks using the drop-down menu, while indicating which licenses are compatible with all the licenses of the module's libraries. The panel also provides an opportunity to compare the current text of the license file with the original text of the license to check for possible differences.
Also, the plugin adds a new item into the IDE's Create new file... menu, called Module License File. If the project has no license, the user can use this functionality, and the plugin will detect the licenses compatible with all the project's libraries, and suggest the most permissive one to the user. This way, even the most inexperienced user can manage their licenses and not make mistakes. In the future, the user can always change their license using the License Editor Notification panel described above.
Finally, the developed plugin provides another convenient way of viewing the licenses of libraries by providing hints right in the build system script. A hint with the name of the license of a given library appears next to each command that connects the library, as shown below. These hints allow the user to keep the licenses in mind when adding new libraries directly in the editor. The hints are implemented for Maven, Groovy Gradle, and Kotlin Gradle scripts.
This project is licensed under the Apache-2.0 License. The full text of the license can be found in the license file.
Sorrel was developed as a part of a research project in the Laboratory of Machine Learning Methods in Software Engineering at JetBrains Research.
If you have any questions or suggestions about the plugin, feel free to contact Yaroslav Golubev in Telegram (@areyde).