Ignoring License Matches

By default, FOSSA will ignore all files that match the following directories:

• Version Control/Devtool Folders: .git/, .srclib-cache/
• Package Dependency & Vendor Folders: node_modules/, bower_components, Godeps/, vendor/ (Contact support if you use vendorized dependencies)
• Test Folders: test/, tests/, _test/, spec/
• Object and Compiled Folders: _obj
• Examples and Documentation: docs/, documentation/, examples/, example/

We also ignore certain file types:

• Source map files: *.map
• Lib files: *.lib
• Keyfiles: *.pem
• Asset Files: *.pdf, *.png, *.jpg, *.jpeg, .psd, .eps
• Archives: *.tar, *.zip, *.tar.gz, *.tgz (Contact support if you need archive inspection)
• Object Files: *.dll, *.so, *.gyp, *.a, *.o, *.exe
• Attribution Files: NOTICE.*

Shoot us an email if you'd like to give feedback on anything that should be added/removed from this list.

The .fossaignore File

FOSSA will also specially parse files named .fossaignore in the root directory of your repository. The .fossaignore file functions identically to a .gitignore file, and ignores whatever files or directories are specified in it during analysis. This may be used to speed up analysis, ignore large/irrelevant data files and fix any false positives. You may whitelist any files or directories in the .fossaignore file that FOSSA automatically ignores (see list above).

.fossaignore files rely on glob matching. A sample .fossaignore may look something like this:

# Ignore everything in the bin and vendor directories
bin/
vendor/

# Ignore data directory
data/

# Ignore JSON & log Fixtures
*.json
*.log

# Ignore OS generated files 
.DS_Store
.Trashes

# Whitelist .pdf files (ignored by default in FOSSA)
!**.pdf

Read about .gitignore files here.

The FOSSA_LICENSE_IGNORE environment variable

In order to add batch file ignores through the FOSSA UI without pushing a .fossaignore file to your repo, you can pass in an environment variable named FOSSA_LICENSE_IGNORE in your project build settings.

In this variable, you can define equivalent glob patterns to the .fossaignore file separated by spaces. For instance setting:

FOSSA_LICENSE_IGNORE = *.json **.pem bin/

will ignore all JSON files in the root directory, private keys anywhere in the repo, and the bin folder.

You can disable license scanning across your root repository in total by setting FOSSA_LICENSE_IGNORE to ** for a drastic speed-up in build times.