In my last post I showed a fairly complex command line that parses the output of licensecheck into something more usable for the new debian/copyright format. The problem was that it didn't quite work properly and it was too complex to modify. So, I took a different approach and modified the licensecheck program directly. Yea, open source!

Here is my simple but working patch for the licensecheck program. Enjoy.


--- licensecheck        2008-06-29 08:53:10.000000000 -0400
+++ licensecheck        2008-07-21 12:44:03.000000000 -0400
@@ -288,12 +288,11 @@
     $content =~ tr/ //s;
 
     $license = parselicense($content);
-    print "$file: ";
+    print $license . "\t";
     print "*No copyright* " unless $copyright;
-    print $license . "\n";
-    print "  [Copyright: " . $copyright . "]\n"
+    print "[Copyright: " . $copyright . "]\t"
       if $copyright and $opt_copyright;
-    print "\n" if $opt_copyright;
+    print "$file\n";
 }
 
 sub parse_copyright($) {


Now I can easily sort all the files by copyright and by owner. This will hopefully make it easier to build and maintain my copyright file for my redmine package.