Current best practices result in no license information in release

[michellehirsch]

If I follow the best practices as currently written:

• I put a license file at the top level of my repository
• I release my software by distributing everything in the toolbox folder

Since there's no copy of the license file in the toolbox folder, end users who install a toolbox don't get the license file.

[rpurser47]

Ooo -- that's a good one. GitHub and lawyers wants it to be in the root, and we'd like to distribute it with the toolbox. I think we can only achieve that with a build operation. I don't think we want the file twice.

[ehennestad]

Would it not be better if that is part of the toolbox metadata, and something that should be part of the Toolbox packaging project?

[michellehirsch]

@ehennestad that's a good idea. The Toolbox packaging task could point to a license file in a repo and also support specifying OSI approved licenses by SPX ID. Similarly, the package metadata (mpackage.json, introduced in 24b) could do the same.

This is such a good idea that we are already working on it, but it's not ready for release. I think that for now we need to come up with some process to recommend that we could simplify once that's ready.

@rpurser47 I don't know the solution, but requiring a build step for every toolbox seems to defeat the purpose of putting all distributable files in the toolbox folder to make distribution easy.

[rpurser47]

I'll set aside some time to think about how to accomplish this. Each solution I've come up with so far feels like it has pros and significant cons.

[rpurser47]

Would it not be better if that is part of the toolbox metadata, and something that should be part of the Toolbox packaging project?

Just remember that from a legal point of view, the file has to be there. The SPX code in the metadata isn't enough.