It seems like a middle way would be: * always run the rat plugin * configure it by default with ignoreErrors=true * let committers / Jenkins / release managers et al. explicitly set rat.ignoreErrors=false (in MAVEN_OPTS or wherever)
By default, the plugin will warn about files lacking a license, but will continue the build. Contributors are exposed to the check but not constrained by it. Example: --- [INFO] Rat check: Summary of files. Unapproved: 1 unknown: 1 generated: 0 approved: 187 licence. [WARNING] Rat check: 1 files with unapproved licenses. See RAT report in: /Users/bhavanki/dev/accumulo/server/base/target/rat.txt --- Any entity that should enforce licenses then needs to set the ignoreErrors flag to false. This can be part of committer onboarding. Bill On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Josh Elser <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 6/17/14, 1:47 PM, Alex Moundalexis wrote: > >> This kind of response is hardly conducive to prospective contributors. >> >> We should consider ourselves lucky whenever a contributor provides a >> patch, >> let alone runs a build. Expecting a new contributor be fully aware of the >> Apache licensing details isn't realistic, much less being aware of the >> arguments concerning Rat; if the ignoreErrors argument is TheWay, it ought >> to be mentioned prominently in the source documentation [1], but I don't >> think that's correct either... >> >> I don't want to encourage contributors to skip the build. I want >> contributors to be aware of the licensing requirements, but not at the >> expense of providing otherwise-viable patches. I'd recommend relaxing the >> Rat checks for contributors, and making it a required part of the profile >> for automated Jenkins builds and during the release process. >> >> The onus should be on the committers to ensure that all of the licensing >> is >> in place before the release, but preferably long before that point by >> guiding the contributor to make the necessary license additions before the >> commit. >> > > This is an important thing to remember. The point of shepherding > contributors is to eventually get them to committer status, at which point > they'll be personally responsible for these things. While we definitely > don't want to be to abrasive initially that they get fed up and go away, we > can't fully insulate from the necessary either. > > > >> I've been told to correct whitespace at the end of a line before and to >> re-submit a patch, seems trivial to address missing licensing files in the >> same way. >> >> [1] https://accumulo.apache.org/source.html >> >> -- // Bill Havanki // Solutions Architect, Cloudera Govt Solutions // 443.686.9283
