Replaces legacy licenses check with licenses_cpp #172486

gaaclarke · 2025-07-21T20:09:54Z

Successful run example: https://ci.chromium.org/ui/p/flutter/builders/try/Linux%20linux_license/35497/overview

The output of licenses_cpp was verified by comparing it's output with //flutter/tools/license_file_compare. All copyrights from the old tool exist in the new tool.

major differences:

runtime - 30s locally
macos compatibility
there are no more checked-in goldens, instead the log from the run is used to audit

design doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TldHod_Ske3llv26l4eIyt64bg8TeDc7Jk7u9L7gnvM/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.17wg41voij6q

work left:

delete old license checker
clean up the handling of licenses that exist across multiple comments (boost license)
clean up the data directory so that whitespace between words is ignored. (remove \s+ usage)

Pre-launch Checklist

I read the Contributor Guide and followed the process outlined there for submitting PRs.
I read the Tree Hygiene wiki page, which explains my responsibilities.
I read and followed the Flutter Style Guide, including Features we expect every widget to implement.
I signed the CLA.
I listed at least one issue that this PR fixes in the description above.
I updated/added relevant documentation (doc comments with ///).
I added new tests to check the change I am making, or this PR is test-exempt.
I followed the breaking change policy and added Data Driven Fixes where supported.
All existing and new tests are passing.

If you need help, consider asking for advice on the #hackers-new channel on Discord.

gaaclarke · 2025-07-21T20:55:48Z

engine/src/flutter/tools/licenses_cpp/src/license_checker.cc

 namespace {
-const std::array<std::string_view, 5> kLicenseFileNames = {
-    "LICENSE", "LICENSE.TXT", "LICENSE.md", "LICENSE.MIT", "COPYING"};
+const std::array<std::string_view, 7> kLicenseFileNames = {


This was a gotcha. macOS is usually built on top of a case-insensitive filesystem, where linux is not.

flutter-dashboard · 2025-07-21T20:57:21Z

It looks like this pull request may not have tests. Please make sure to add tests or get an explicit test exemption before merging.

If you are not sure if you need tests, consider this rule of thumb: the purpose of a test is to make sure someone doesn't accidentally revert the fix. Ask yourself, is there anything in your PR that you feel it is important we not accidentally revert back to how it was before your fix?

Reviewers: Read the Tree Hygiene page and make sure this patch meets those guidelines before LGTMing.If you believe this PR qualifies for a test exemption, contact "@test-exemption-reviewer" in the #hackers channel in Discord (don't just cc them here, they won't see it!). The test exemption team is a small volunteer group, so all reviewers should feel empowered to ask for tests, without delegating that responsibility entirely to the test exemption group.

zanderso · 2025-07-21T21:11:52Z

Nice. What's the experience for Failed runs should give guidance on how to address the failure like?

jtmcdole

jtmcdole · 2025-07-21T21:15:05Z

engine/src/flutter/tools/licenses_cpp/data/exclude.txt

 ^third_party/swiftshader/third_party/.*
 ^third_party/swiftshader/third_party/llvm-10.0/.*
 ^third_party/swiftshader/third_party/llvm-16.0/.*
+(?i)^third_party/vulkan-deps/glslang/src/LICENSE\.txt$


so (?i) is the case insensitive part? Is the whole match insensitive?

yep, we might want to consider making every line implicitly case-insensitive. we'll see if this becomes a reoccurring pain.

gaaclarke · 2025-07-21T21:15:43Z

Nice. What's the experience for Failed runs should give guidance on how to address the failure like?

The diff on the LICENSE file is printed out with no commentary. I can expand on it.

zanderso · 2025-07-21T21:26:33Z

Nice. What's the experience for Failed runs should give guidance on how to address the failure like?

The diff on the LICENSE file is printed out with no commentary. I can expand on it.

Thoughts on putting the new computed file in the logs directory that gets retained? @matanlurey might remember how to do that.

gaaclarke · 2025-07-21T21:29:36Z

Thoughts on putting the new computed file in the logs directory that gets retained? @matanlurey might remember how to do that.

It looks like the logs are already being saved: https://ci.chromium.org/ui/p/flutter/builders/try/Linux%20linux_license/35497/overview

If you follow the link though the only thing that seems saved is noop.txt. Did we use to save logs then just shunt in noop.txt?

gaaclarke · 2025-07-21T21:31:24Z

Nice. What's the experience for Failed runs should give guidance on how to address the failure like?

The diff on the LICENSE file is printed out with no commentary. I can expand on it.

@zanderso I added a more helpful failure message.

zanderso · 2025-07-21T21:38:57Z

Not sure if this would help, but my thinking was to save the new license file to the persistent logs directory. Downloading that file and adding it to the PR might be easier than copy-pasting the diff out of logs and applying it as a patch. Not as part of this PR, but if that's in improvement, it might be easier to do while we're thinking about it.

gaaclarke · 2025-07-21T21:46:07Z

Thoughts on putting the new computed file in the logs directory that gets retained? @matanlurey might remember how to do that.

Another thought, stdout is saved since one is able to review those. Do those not have lifetime that matches what we'd want here?

Downloading that file and adding it to the PR might be easier than copy-pasting the diff out of logs and applying it as a patch.

Definitely, if the diff is big. For small changes it will be about the same workflow. But execution time is still 30s to 60s, downloading a file might save you a bit of time, but not a huge difference.

gaaclarke · 2025-07-21T23:21:08Z

This can go stale so I'm going to land this as is and we can address the logging problem in a future PR once we hear back from Matan. It seems stdout logging is sufficient for now.

…lutter#172486)

flutter/flutter@70cdc0c...ee0cc66 2025-07-22 [email protected] Licenses cpp ignore whitespace (flutter/flutter#172512) 2025-07-22 [email protected] feat: start using the content aware hash for downloading artifacts (flutter/flutter#172552) 2025-07-22 [email protected] fix: correct typo in analysis_options.yaml comment (disabeling -> disabling) (flutter/flutter#170206) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Hide `flutter assemble` unless `--verbose` (flutter/flutter#172508) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Fix PopupMenuButton crashes when being hidden immediately (flutter/flutter#171970) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Add hitTestChildren to baseline-aligned stack (flutter/flutter#172485) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Roll Skia from 4aba494b8108 to eea1c33fbe84 (11 revisions) (flutter/flutter#172515) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Replaces legacy licenses check with licenses_cpp (flutter/flutter#172486) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Omit `w` (widget tree), `t` (render tree) from `flutter run --profile` `h` (flutter/flutter#172506) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Refactor checks for `--machine` (flutter/flutter#172504) 2025-07-22 [email protected] feat(IconButton): add property to specify a states controller (flutter/flutter#169821) 2025-07-21 98614782+auto-submit[bot]@users.noreply.github.com Reverts "feat: start using the content aware hash for downloading artifacts (#171927)" (flutter/flutter#172505) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Render Flutter in its own EGL context (flutter/flutter#172330) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Feat: Add momentary varient of CupertinoSlidingSegmentedControl (flutter/flutter#164262) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Roll Packages from cb8fef6 to 9c85e5e (10 revisions) (flutter/flutter#172479) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Wrap `ShutdownHook` calls to avoid crashing the tool (flutter/flutter#171917) 2025-07-21 [email protected] fix: macOS Mojave Crash on Flutter Desktop Startup (flutter/flutter#172282) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Roll Skia from 9587301e33bc to 4aba494b8108 (41 revisions) (flutter/flutter#172471) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Add CLA note to tree hygiene (flutter/flutter#172475) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Add `radioInnerRadius` to `RadioListTile` (flutter/flutter#171851) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Use baseUri always when doing a hot reload or hot restart (flutter/flutter#172271) 2025-07-21 [email protected] feat: start using the content aware hash for downloading artifacts (flutter/flutter#171927) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Add support for `/?` to alias to `--help` (flutter/flutter#172328) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Upgrade flutter_lints in project template pubspec.yaml files (flutter/flutter#172400) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Use `$dartSdkVersion` when creating "dummy" pubspec for `create_api_docs` (flutter/flutter#172327) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Adds `(defaults to ___)` when using `flutter config --help` (flutter/flutter#172329) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Add a warning on usage of `dartPluginClass: 'none'`. (flutter/flutter#172315) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Skip [tool] crash reporting on `--local-engine` (flutter/flutter#172326) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Remove IDE validation from `flutter doctor` (flutter/flutter#171924) If this roll has caused a breakage, revert this CL and stop the roller using the controls here: https://autoroll.skia.org/r/flutter-packages Please CC [email protected] on the revert to ensure that a human is aware of the problem. To file a bug in Packages: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/new/choose To report a problem with the AutoRoller itself, please file a bug: https://issues.skia.org/issues/new?component=1389291&template=1850622 Documentation for the AutoRoller is here: https://skia.googlesource.com/buildbot/+doc/main/autoroll/README.md

)" This reverts commit f63b38f.

…r#9662) flutter/flutter@70cdc0c...ee0cc66 2025-07-22 [email protected] Licenses cpp ignore whitespace (flutter/flutter#172512) 2025-07-22 [email protected] feat: start using the content aware hash for downloading artifacts (flutter/flutter#172552) 2025-07-22 [email protected] fix: correct typo in analysis_options.yaml comment (disabeling -> disabling) (flutter/flutter#170206) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Hide `flutter assemble` unless `--verbose` (flutter/flutter#172508) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Fix PopupMenuButton crashes when being hidden immediately (flutter/flutter#171970) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Add hitTestChildren to baseline-aligned stack (flutter/flutter#172485) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Roll Skia from 4aba494b8108 to eea1c33fbe84 (11 revisions) (flutter/flutter#172515) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Replaces legacy licenses check with licenses_cpp (flutter/flutter#172486) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Omit `w` (widget tree), `t` (render tree) from `flutter run --profile` `h` (flutter/flutter#172506) 2025-07-22 [email protected] Refactor checks for `--machine` (flutter/flutter#172504) 2025-07-22 [email protected] feat(IconButton): add property to specify a states controller (flutter/flutter#169821) 2025-07-21 98614782+auto-submit[bot]@users.noreply.github.com Reverts "feat: start using the content aware hash for downloading artifacts (#171927)" (flutter/flutter#172505) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Render Flutter in its own EGL context (flutter/flutter#172330) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Feat: Add momentary varient of CupertinoSlidingSegmentedControl (flutter/flutter#164262) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Roll Packages from cb8fef6 to 9c85e5e (10 revisions) (flutter/flutter#172479) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Wrap `ShutdownHook` calls to avoid crashing the tool (flutter/flutter#171917) 2025-07-21 [email protected] fix: macOS Mojave Crash on Flutter Desktop Startup (flutter/flutter#172282) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Roll Skia from 9587301e33bc to 4aba494b8108 (41 revisions) (flutter/flutter#172471) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Add CLA note to tree hygiene (flutter/flutter#172475) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Add `radioInnerRadius` to `RadioListTile` (flutter/flutter#171851) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Use baseUri always when doing a hot reload or hot restart (flutter/flutter#172271) 2025-07-21 [email protected] feat: start using the content aware hash for downloading artifacts (flutter/flutter#171927) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Add support for `/?` to alias to `--help` (flutter/flutter#172328) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Upgrade flutter_lints in project template pubspec.yaml files (flutter/flutter#172400) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Use `$dartSdkVersion` when creating "dummy" pubspec for `create_api_docs` (flutter/flutter#172327) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Adds `(defaults to ___)` when using `flutter config --help` (flutter/flutter#172329) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Add a warning on usage of `dartPluginClass: 'none'`. (flutter/flutter#172315) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Skip [tool] crash reporting on `--local-engine` (flutter/flutter#172326) 2025-07-21 [email protected] Remove IDE validation from `flutter doctor` (flutter/flutter#171924) If this roll has caused a breakage, revert this CL and stop the roller using the controls here: https://autoroll.skia.org/r/flutter-packages Please CC [email protected] on the revert to ensure that a human is aware of the problem. To file a bug in Packages: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/new/choose To report a problem with the AutoRoller itself, please file a bug: https://issues.skia.org/issues/new?component=1389291&template=1850622 Documentation for the AutoRoller is here: https://skia.googlesource.com/buildbot/+doc/main/autoroll/README.md

…lutter#172486)

gaaclarke added 9 commits July 21, 2025 18:05

Fixed linux errors in licenses_cpp

4cd2cf3

exclude conglomerate license

27fe366

undid change to licenses_cpp

6147910

ignore tools fuchsia

99f726f

fixed case sensitivity exclude

bfcba57

updated sky

ec9792f

replaced old licenses check

1fcdb6d

added lto

d04cfbd

moved LICENSE_CPP

4480a3a

github-actions bot added the engine flutter/engine related. See also e: labels. label Jul 21, 2025

gaaclarke added 2 commits July 21, 2025 13:10

added newline

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sort

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gaaclarke commented Jul 21, 2025

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gaaclarke marked this pull request as ready for review July 21, 2025 20:56

gaaclarke requested review from jtmcdole and zanderso July 21, 2025 20:57

jtmcdole approved these changes Jul 21, 2025

View reviewed changes

added more helpful failure message

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Merged via the queue into flutter:master with commit f63b38f Jul 22, 2025
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Revert "Replaces legacy licenses check with licenses_cpp (flutter#172486

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Revert "Replaces legacy licenses check with licenses_cpp (flutter#172486

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f63b38f27 Replaces legacy licenses check with licenses_cpp (flutter/f…

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…lutter#172486)

Replaces legacy licenses check with licenses_cpp #172486

Replaces legacy licenses check with licenses_cpp #172486

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