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Remove recursive license files (NOTICES) #174996
Description
The new license checker parses 2 NOTICES files from devtools:
These appear to be recursive and should be removed. This was discovered when attempting to remove the web_unicode dependency. We would remove it from flutter/flutter, but it would still show up in the output LICENSE file because of its presence in the NOTICES file. The NOTICES file itself in the dependency appears to be generated in such a way that is recursive.
Those NOTICES files were added because the output of the old license checker was compared with the new license checker and there were seemingly licenses in the output that didn't appear anywhere but in that NOTICES file. The old license checker however explicitly excluded those NOTICES files.
After reviewing the problem here are the causes for those missing copyrights that we were getting from the NOTICES files we should be generating ourselves:
- Some licenses only existed on linux code checkouts, specifically the fuchsia licenses
- One license wasn't included because the directory had 2 licenses (
third_party/libjpeg-turbo/src/README.ijgandthird_party/libjpeg-turbo/src/LICENSE) - Some licenses just weren't getting parsed correctly, specifically the myriad of copyrights in icu.
The parsing of those NOTICES files should be removed.
Activity
gaaclarke commentedon Sep 12, 2025
The old license checked did exclude some NOTICES files:
flutter/engine/src/flutter/tools/licenses/lib/paths.dart
Line 239 in 432cfa6
third_party/dart/third_party/devtools/web/assets/NOTICESwould have been excluded too as evidenced here:flutter/engine/src/flutter/ci/licenses_golden/excluded_files
Line 1714 in 432cfa6
gaaclarke commentedon Sep 12, 2025
@mdebbar do you know how
third_party/dart/third_party/devtools/web/assets/NOTICESis generated? That's a bit fuzzy to me. I'd like a clear understanding of the cycle.mdebbar commentedon Sep 16, 2025
@gaaclarke sorry for the late reply. AFAICT, it's generated by
LicensesCollector.obtainLicenses()which then gets written to theNOTICESfile in:flutter/packages/flutter_tools/lib/src/asset.dart
Line 724 in 2cda3fb
Removes NOTICES from licenses input (#174967)
Removes NOTICES from licenses input (flutter#174967)
github-actions commentedon Oct 2, 2025
This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. If you are still experiencing a similar issue, please open a new bug, including the output of
flutter doctor -vand a minimal reproduction of the issue.Removes NOTICES from licenses input (flutter#174967)
Removes NOTICES from licenses input (flutter#174967)
Removes NOTICES from licenses input (#174967)