Dne petek, 2. avgust 2024 ob 15:38:40 GMT +2 ste napisali:
> I think the purpose of the SPDX File Tags was intentionally limited to
> file-level metadata, since that’s what aligns with e.g. embedding inside a
> single source code file.

That brings me back to `ArtifactOf[…]` tags that were deprecated … more on 
that below.

> Where the goal is to convey package-level information, I’d guess it would
> probably be best to just create an actual SPDX document for the package
> metadata?

With this use case I am not interested in handling information for the whole 
package/repository, I am in fact interested in _where this file/snippet came 
from_.

Let us say I have a source code repository where there is 1000s of files that 
are my own, and a few dozen that I copied (files or snippets) from elsewhere.

Let us say I want to track where those files (or snippets) came from (for 
updating, security, license (un)ambiguity, … reasons). And I want that info to 
travel together with those files (or snippets) if they are copied further.

Another use case would be to record the provenance of all the source code 
files in my own repository, so if they end up elsewhere, it is easy to track 
down the upstream.

How can I do that?

This was technically possible until SPDX 1.8.4, as the following were File-
level tags:

https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2.3/file-information/#89-artifact-of-project-name-field-deprecated
https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2.3/file-information/#810-artifact-of-project-homepage-field-deprecated
https://spdx.github.io/spdx-spec/v2.3/file-information/#811-artifact-of-project-uniform-resource-identifier-field-deprecated

So it is not a new need, just that until File Tags and REUSE picked up, I 
assume it was very limited how they could be actually implied in practice.

`ArtifactOf[…]` tags are said to be deprecated in favour of “External 
Packages”, which is not a thing. The closest to that are “F. External 
Repository Identifiers” and the “7.21 External reference field”, which are 
Package-level.

So in the conversion that happened in 1.8.4, it seems the ability to associate 
a file with an external package has been lost.

While my use case is about File Tags and storing this information in source 
code files directly, it seems to me that this gap (at least in 2.x) is also 
present in SPDX Documents. Unless I am missing something, there is no way 
(anymore) to associate a covered file with an external package or otherwise 
indicate its origin.

> See also this discussion thread from 2021/2022 regarding the idea of having
> a sort of “pre-SPDX” lightweight manifest that could be used to
> auto-generate an SPDX document:
> https://github.com/spdx/spdx-spec/issues/502#issuecomment-807414277.

That is a different, although slightly tangental use case.


cheers,
Matija
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