ScanCode-Toolkit Documentation

ScanCode Toolkit is a set of code scanning tools that detect the origin (copyrights), license and vulnerabilities of code, packages and dependencies in a codebase. It is the leading tool in scanning depth and accuracy, used by hundreds of software teams. You can use ScanCode Toolkit as a command line tool or as a library.

ScanCode is part of the AboutCode community! Join our friendly Slack to ask questions, share ideas or discuss your challenges with other members of our community. If you want to ask questions or anything else that you think are not bugs/new features, open a discussion with the ScanCode repository.

Documentation overview

The overview below outlines how the documentation is structured to help you know where to look for certain things.

Getting Started

Start here if you are new to ScanCode.

• Installing ScanCode

• Install ScanCode from releases archives

• Install ScanCode using docker

• Install ScanCode from source

• Install ScanCode using pip

• FAQs

Tutorials

Learn via practical step-by-step guides.

• Running a scan

• Visualizing scan results

• Configuring scan output formats

• Configuring what will be detected in scan

• Adding a post-scan plugin

How-To Guides

Helps you accomplish things.

• How to add a new license to ScanCode detection

• How to add new license rules for enhanced detection

• How to install external licenses to use in license dectection

• How to generate attribution doc from a ScanCode scan

Reference and Explanation

Consult the reference to find CLI parameters.

• ScanCode CLI options

• ScanCode plugins to extend ScanCode at different stages

• Supported package manifests and package datafiles

• Rebuild the license index with the ScanCode reindex licenses CLI

Broaden your understanding using the explanation of ScanCode key concepts.

• Innerworkings of ScanCode license detection

Improving Documentation

Something Missing?

If something is missing in the documentation or if you found some part confusing, please file an issue with your suggestions for improvement. Use the “Documentation Improvement” template.

Your help makes ScanCode docs better, we love hearing from you!