Core options

Quick reference

-n, --processes INTEGER

Scan <input> using n parallel processes.

Default: (number of CPUs)-1

-v, --verbose

Print verbose file-by-file progress messages.

-q, --quiet

Do not print summary or progress messages.

--timeout FLOAT

Stop scanning a file if scanning takes longer than a timeout in seconds.

Default: 120

--from-json

Load codebase from one or more existing JSON scans to:

  • apply post-scan options to do additional processing of scan results

  • merge multiple JSON scans into one.

--max-in-memory INTEGER

Maximum number of files and directories scan details kept in memory during a scan. Additional files and directories scan details above this number are cached on-disk rather than in memory. Use 0 to use unlimited memory and disable on-disk caching. Use -1 to use only on-disk caching.

Default: 10000

--max-depth INTEGER

Descend at most INTEGER levels of directories including and below the starting point. INTEGER must be positive or zero for no limit.

Default: 0

Comparing progress message options

Default progress message

By default a rolling progress bar and scanned file count is shown.

Scanning files for: infos, licenses, copyrights, packages, emails, urls with 1 process(es)...
Building license detection index...Done.
Scanning files...
[####################] 43
Scanning done.
Scan statistics: 43 files scanned in 33s.
Scan options:    infos, licenses, copyrights, packages, emails, urls with 1 process(es).
Scanning speed:  1.4 files per sec.
Scanning time:   30s.
Indexing time:   2s.
Saving results.

Progress message with –verbose

When --verbose is enabled, progress messages for individual files are shown.

Scanning files for: infos, licenses, copyrights, packages, emails, urls with 1 process(es)...
Building license detection index...Done.
Scanning files...
Scanned: screenshot.png
Scanned: README
...
Scanned: zlib/dotzlib/ChecksumImpl.cs
Scanned: zlib/dotzlib/readme.txt
Scanned: zlib/gcc_gvmat64/gvmat64.S
Scanned: zlib/ada/zlib.ads
Scanned: zlib/infback9/infback9.c
Scanned: zlib/infback9/infback9.h
Scanned: arch/zlib.tar.gz
Scanning done.
Scan statistics: 43 files scanned in 29s.
Scan options:    infos, licenses, copyrights, packages, emails, urls with 1 process(es).
Scanning speed:  1.58 files per sec.
Scanning time:   27s.
Indexing time:   2s.
Saving results.

With the ``–quiet`` option enabled, nothing is printed on the command line.

--timeout

This option sets scan timeout for each file (and not the entire scan). If some file scan exceeds the specified timeout, that file isn’t scanned anymore and the next file scanning starts. This helps avoiding very large/long files, and saves time.

Also the number (timeout in seconds) to be followed by this option can be a floating point number, i.e. 1.5467.

--from-json

If you want to input scan results from a .json file, and run a scan again on those same files, with some other options/output format, you can do so using the --from-json option.

Example

scancode --from-json sample.json --json-pp sample_2.json --classify

This inputs the scan results from sample.json, runs the post-scan plugin --classify and outputs the results for this scan to sample_2.json.

--max-in-memory INT

During a scan, as individual files are scanned, the scan details for those files are kept on memory till the scan is completed. Then after the scan is completed, they are written in the specified output format.

Now, if the scan involves a very large number of files, they might not fit in the memory during the scan. For this reason, disk-caching can be used for some/all of the files.

Some important INTEGER values of the --max-in-memory INTEGER option:

  • 0 - Unlimited ,emory, store all the file/directory scan results on memory

  • -1 - Use only disk-caching, store all the file/directory scan results on disk

  • 10000 - Default, store 10,000 file/directory scan results on memory and the rest on disk

Example

scancode -clieu --json-pp sample.json samples --max-in-memory -1

--max_depth INT

Normally, the scan takes place upto the maximum level of nesting of directories possible. But using the --max-depth option, you can specify the maximum level of directories to scan, including and below the root location. This can reduce the time taken for the scan when deeper directories are not relevant.

Note that the --max-depth option will be ignored if you are scanning from a JSON file using the --from-json option. In that case, the original depth is used.

Example

scancode -clieu --json-pp results.json samples --max-depth 3

This would scan the file samples/levelone/leveltwo/file but ignore samples/levelone/leveltwo/levelthree/file