How To: Run a scan

Quickstart

ScanCode results are provided as:

1. JSON file (default)
2. html (static html)

The basic usage is:

./scancode [OPTIONS] <OUTPUT FORMAT OPTION(s)> <input>

Note: On Windows use scancode instead of ./scancode

The <input> file or directory is what will be scanned for origin clues. The results will be saved to the <output_file> in <OUTPUT FORMAT OPTION(s)>. The output file format is set by using the following output formats: (The default output format is JSON)

output formats:
    --json FILE             Write scan output as compact JSON to FILE.
    --json-pp FILE          Write scan output as pretty-printed JSON to FILE.
    --json-lines FILE       Write scan output as JSON Lines to FILE.
    --csv FILE              Write scan output as CSV to FILE.
    --html FILE             Write scan output as HTML to FILE.
    --custom-output FILE    Write scan output to FILE formatted with the custom
                            Jinja template file.
    --custom-template FILE  Use this Jinja template FILE as a custom template.
    --spdx-rdf FILE         Write scan output as SPDX RDF to FILE.
    --spdx-tv FILE          Write scan output as SPDX Tag/Value to FILE.
    --html-app FILE         (DEPRECATED: use the ScanCode Workbench app instead
                            ) Write scan output as a mini HTML application to
                            FILE.

The following example scans will show you how to run a scan with each of the result formats. For the scans, we will use the samples directory provided with the ScanCode Toolkit.

JSON file output

Scan the samples directory and save the scan to a JSON file:

./scancode --json samples samples.json

Static html output

Scan the samples directory for licenses and copyrights and save the scan results to an HTML file. When the scan is done, open samples.html in your web browser.

./scancode --html samples samples.html