Documentation extractor and renderer for Debian packages¶
debmans
is a tool to extract documentation (currently manpages) from
Debian packages and transform them into HTML for viewing with a normal
web browser.
This suite of tools is designed to run on manpages.debian.org, manpages.debian.org, linux.die.net or similar services.
Contents:
Usage¶
Example¶
You can do a test run of this software against your local APT cache, like this:
$ ( cd /var/cache/apt/archives/ && dpkg-scanpackages . | sudo tee Packages > /dev/null )
dpkg-scanpackages: warning: package tar (filename ./tar_1.27.1-2+b1_amd64.deb) is repeat;
dpkg-scanpackages: warning: ignored that one and using data from ./tar_1.27.1-2+deb8u1_amd64.deb!
$ debmans -m /var/cache/apt/archives -o html -v --progress extract render site serve
extracting files matching patterns: (u'man/(?:\\w+/)?man[1-9]/.+\\.[1-9]\\w*(?:\\.gz)?$',) in mirror /var/cache/apt/archives
extracting packages [####################################] 100%
completed inspection of 564 packages, extracted 559 files
received 559 paths from extractor
rendering manpages [#################################---] 92% 0d 00:00:02man2html: unable to open or read file man1/dmenu.1
rendering manpages [####################################] 100%
looking for static files to render in *.mdwn
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000...
Your rendered manpages will be available at <http://localhost:8000/>.
Note that you will need dpkg-scanpackages
from the
dpkg-dev package to run the
above test. The warnings can be safely ignored. debmans
doesn’t
normally require dpkg-dev
in operation if you use a properly
configured mirror.
Common tasks¶
A more normal run would be to run on a regular mirror. This will extract all manpages from the given mirror and convert to HTML:
debmans --mirror /srv/mirror --output static extract render
This can be ran repeatedly and only extracted manpages will be rendered.
Extraction only¶
You can also run the process step by step, for example, this will only extract the manpages:
debmans -m /srv/mirror -o html extract
Note that extract creates a cache in the output directory to avoid
re-extracting already found archives. Render also uses a caching
mechanism by not converting to HTML if the HTML version is newer than
the manpage. Those mechanisms can be disabled with --no-cache
.
debmans -m /srv/mirror -o html --no-cache extract
You can make a trial run with the -n
flag and enable more verbose
logging:
debmans -v -n -m /srv/mirror -o manpages extract
Rendering only¶
Rendering the pages can be done separately with:
debmans -o html render --srcdir manpages
This is especially important if the extraction process was interrupted, as only part of the manpages will be rendered on subsequent runs.
Manpages are currently rendered with
man2html but
this can be changed with the -r
flag, although no other renderer has
been tested and the output may not be compatible with man2html
.
Static pages rendering¶
The templating engine is fairly simple, based on Jinja2, which uses
standard {{foo}}
placeholders. The template is in
static/template.html
and should be following debian.org’s graphic
design conventions.
This should generate the markdown files:
debmans -o html site
Use --prefix
if the directory is not at the root of the host.
Installation¶
debmans
can be installed through pip with:
pip install debmans
Source code can also be found on Gitlab with Git or as a tarball, or on Debian’s collab-maint repository.
The source code is should be installed with:
./setup.py install
It can also be ran from the source tree directly with:
python -m debmans render
The dependencies are listed in the setup.py
file.
Acknowledgements¶
debmans
was written by Antoine Beaupré and is licensed under the
Affero GPLv3, see License for the complete license.
Parts of this software were inspired by a review of existing tools, most
notably the Ubuntu manpages
converter and
dgilman’s converter. The
sources.debian.net service source code
and design was also directly used in some parts, which is partly why
debmans
is licensed under the AGPL.
Also thanks to Paul Wise for nudging me along and all the help navigating the various tools and protocols to make all this work.
This project mostly follows the Core Infrastructure best practices, see the full report for details.
Design¶
This page explains the design principles and decisions in the project.
Minimum viable product¶
The Minimum Viable Product for this project is a service that creates an
HTML version of all the manpages of all the packages available in
Debian, for all supported suites. Basic whatis(1)
functionality is
also expected.
apropos(1)
functionality is considered extra that can be implemented
later with already existing tools.
The design is split those components which map to debmans
subcommands:
extract
: extracts manpages from Debian packagesrender
: renders manpages into HTMLsite
: render a static site into HTMLindex
: indexes HTML pages for searching (not implemented yet)search
: the search interface (not implemented, but there is a simple “jump” Javascript tool)
There is also a serve
command which starts a local webserver to help
with development.
See the Remaining work file for details about the missing bits.
Extract¶
This part fetches all manpages from the archive and stores them on disk. This makes them usable for tools like dman that browses remote webpages.
The layout options for where to store files were:
- Ubuntu:
$DISTRIB_CODENAME/$LOCALE/man$i/$PAGE.$i.gz
(see dman) - original codebase:
"${OUTPUTDIR}/${pooldir}/${packagename}_${version}"
(from manpage-extractor.pl)
Ubuntu’s approach was chosen to avoid bitrot and follow more closely the existing filesystem layout. It also happens to be easier to implement.
The extractor uses a cache to avoid re-extracting known manpages. We use
the Ubuntu layout there as well
($outputdir/$suite/.cache/$packagename_version
), which leads to
bitrot, but at least it’s constrained to a suite. This will be a problem
for unstable, so maybe some garbage-collection may be necessary.
Render¶
This converts manpages to HTML so they are readable in a web browser.
Possile options for this implementation:
- just the plaintext output of man wrapped in
<PRE>
tags (current design) - man2html is an old C program that ships with a bunch of CGI scripts
- there’s another man2html that is a perl script, but I couldn’t figure out how to use it correctly.
- w3m has another Perl script that is used by the Ubuntu site
- roffit is another perl script. the version in Debian is
ancient (2012) and doesn’t display the
man(1)
synopsis correctly (newer versions from github also fail) - pandoc can’t, unfortunately, read manpages (only write)
- man itself can generate an HTML version with
man -Hcat man
and the output is fairly decent, although there is no cross-referencing
The Makefile here tests possible manpage HTML renderers. Each is timed
with time(1)
to show its performance.
Package | Timing |
---|---|
roffit | 0.06user 0.00system 0:00.07elapsed 96%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 4852maxresident)k |
w3m | 0.26user 0.01system 0:00.19elapsed 137%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 5456maxresident)k |
man | 1.63user 0.17system 0:01.81elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 27268maxresident)k |
man2html | 0.00user 0.00system 0:00.01elapsed 61%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1568maxresident)k |
Note
Those statistics were created with
debmans/test/converters/Makefile
in the source tree.
Here is how the actual output compares:
Package | Correctness |
---|---|
roffit | SYNOPSIS fails to display correctly |
w3m | includes HTTP headers, links to CGI script, all pre-formatted, no TOC |
man | TOC, no cross-referencing |
man2html | includes HTTP headers, links to CGI script, index at the end |
man2html
was originally chosen because it is the fastest, includes
an index and is not too opiniated about how the output is
formatted. Unfortunately, it would fail to parse a lot of manpages,
like the ones from the gnutls
project. w3m
was used as a
fallback, even though it actually calls man
itself to do part of
the rendering.
Index¶
This indexes HTML pages in a search engine of some sort.
In the backend, something will need to index the manpages if only to
implement apropos(1)
functionality, but eventually also full-text
search. This should be modular so that new backends can be implemented
as needed.
For now, we are considering reusing the existing Xapian infrastructure the Debian project already has.
The indexer would:
- run
omindex
on the HTML tree and create a database - process each locale separately so they are isolated (may be tricky
for
LANG=C
) and that the right stemmer is called - need a CGI script (provided by the xapian-omega package) to query the database - the HTML output is generated based on templates, so presumably we could reuse the existing templates.
It is assumed that Xapian can deal with large datasets (10-50GB) considering how it is used in Notmuch (my own mailbox is around ~6GB) and lists.debian.org.
We put the command name in the page <title>
tag, the short
description in <meta description="...">
and use the magic markers
(<!--htdig_noindex-->ignored<!--/htdig_noindex-->
) to make the
indexer ignore redundant bits.
See the Search section for more information about the various search software evaluated and the web interface.
Xapian examples¶
Index all documents in html/
:
$ ominxed --url / --db search --mime-type=gz:ignore html/
11.03user 0.36system 0:12.27elapsed 92%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 29952maxresident)k
18056inputs+15688outputs (0major+7884minor)pagefaults 0swaps
--url
is the equivalent of the renderer’s --prefix
, --db
is
a directory where the database will end up and --mime-type
is to
ignore raw manpages.
Second runs are much faster:
$ time omindex --url / --db search --mime-type=gz:ignore html/
0.01user 0.00system 0:00.02elapsed 88%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 4656maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+300minor)pagefaults 0swaps
Display information about the search database:
$ delve search.db
UUID = 6fd4d4ab-2529-4d67-bbff-32b88fd888fa
number of documents = 452
average document length = 3976.96
document length lower bound = 78
document length upper bound = 243183
highest document id ever used = 452
has positional information = true
Example searches:
$ quest -d search.db man2html | grep ^url
url=/cache/man/fr/man1/man2html.1.html
url=/cache/man/man1/man2html.1.html
url=/cache/man/ro/man1/man2html.1.html
url=/cache/man/it/man1/man2html.1.html
url=/cache/man/el/man1/man2html.1.html
$ quest -d search.db setreg | grep ^url
url=/cache/man/man1/setreg.1.html
url=/cache/man/man1/mozroots.1.html
url=/cache/man/man1/chktrust.1.html
url=/cache/man/man1/certmgr.1.html
This would search only <title>
fields:
--prefix=title:S 'title:foo'
.
Searching¶
The search interface itself would be a CGI or WSGI tool (if written in Python) interface that would hook into the webserver to perform searches.
Currently only a browser-based, Javascript search tool implements basic
whatis(1)
functionality. It looks up the manpage using a
XMLHttpRequest to see
if the requested page exists and redirects appropriately. It doesn’t
look at different locales yet.
This should be extended to a full search interface, using omega
‘s
web interface or other pluggable interfaces.
Search software evaluation¶
Various search were evaluated:
- Xapian:
- used by Notmuch, craigslist, search.debian.org, lists.debian.org, wiki.debian.org, old gmane.org
- no web API, would need to index directly through the Python API
- harder to use
- no extra server necessary
- internal knowledge already present in debian.org
- bound to use their CGI interface (Omega)
- written in C++
- Lucene / Solr:
- requires another server and API communications
- per-index user/password access control
- mature solution that has been around for a long time
- may support indexing HTML?
- JSON or XML data entry
- large contributor community
- usually faster than ES
- based on Apache Lucene
- written in Java
- used by Netflix, Cnet
- Elasticsearch:
- requires a server
- packaged in Debian
- REST/JSON API
- documentation may be lacking when compared so Solr, e.g. had to ask
on IRC to see if
_id
can be a string (yes, it can) - Python API, but could also be operated with a Javascript library
- may be easier to scale than Solr
- performance comparable with Solr
- was designed to replace Solr
- supports indexing HTML directly by stripping tags and entities
- based on Apache Lucene as well
- written in Java as well
- requires a CLA for contributing
- used by Github, Foursquare, presumably new gmane.org
- created in 2010, ~18 months support lifetime?
- sphinx: not well known, ignored
- mngosearch: considered dead, ignored
- homegrown:
- codesearch uses Postgresql
- David’s uses sqlite
- Readthedocs has a custom-built Javascript-based search engine
- we could use a simple Flask REST API for searches, but then the extractor (or renderer?) would need to write stuff to some database - sqlite reads fails when writing, so maybe not a good candidate?
Sources:
Infrastructure¶
At least the extractor and renderer would run on manziarly
. The
output would be stored on the static.d.o CDN (see below). parts 3 could
be a separate (pair or?) server(s?) to run the search cluster.
In the above setup, manziarly
would be a master server for static
file servers in the Debian.org infrastructure. Files saved there would
be rsync’d to multiple frontend servers. How this is configured is
detailed in the
static-mirroring
DSA documentation, but basically, we would need to ask the DSA team for
an extra entry for manpages.d.o there to server static files.
Gitlab vs Alioth¶
The project was originally hosted in the Collaborative Maintenance repositories, but those quickly showed their limitations, which included lack of continuous integration, issue tracking and automatic rendering of markdown files.
A project was created on Gitlab for this purpose, in anarcat’s personnal
repositories (for now). On Gitlab, the project “mirrors” the public git
URL of the
collab-maint
repo. On collab-maint, there is a cronjob in my
personnal account which runs this command to synchronize the changes
from Gitlab at the 17th minute of the hour:
git -C /git/collab-maint/debmans.git fetch --quiet gitlab master:master
This was found to be the best compromise in adding the extra gitlab features while still keeping access threshold for Debian members low. Do note that there is no conflict resolution whatsoever on collab-maint’s side, and the behavior of Gitlab in case of conflicts isn’t determined yet. This may require manual fixing of merge conflicts.
Other implementations¶
There were already three known implementations of “man to web” archive generators when this project was started.
After careful consideration of existing alternatives, it was determined
it was easier and simpler to write a cleanroom implementation, based in
part on the lessons learned from the existing implementations and the
more mature debsources
project.
Original manpages.d.o codebase¶
The original codebase is a set of Perl and bash CGI scripts that dynamically generate (and search through) manpages.
The original codebase extracts manpages with dpkg --fsys-tarfile
and
the tar tar
commands. It also creates indexes using man -k
for
future searches. Manpages are stored in a directory for each
package-version
pair, so it doesn’t garbage-collect disappeared
manpages. It also appears that packages are always extracted, even if
they had been parsed before.
The CGI script just calls man
and outputs plain text wrapped in
<PRE>
tags without any cross-referencing or further formatting.
There is also a copy of the Ubuntu scripts in the source code.
Ubuntu¶
Ubuntu has their own manpage repository at https://manpages.ubuntu.com/. Their codebase is partly Python, Perl and Bash.
It looks like there’s a
bash
‘’‘and’‘’
python
implementation of the same thing. They process the whole archive on the
local filesystem and create a timestamp file for every package found,
which avoids processing packages repeatedly (but all packages from the
Packages
listing are stat
‘d at every run). In the bash version,
the manpages are extracted with dpkg -x
, in the Python version as
well, athough it uses the apt
python package to list files. It uses
a simple regex (^usr/share/man/.*\.gz$
) to find manpages.
It keeps a cache of the md5sum of the package in
"$PUBLIC_HTML_DIR/manpages/$dist/.cache/$name
to avoid looking at
known packages. The bash version only looks at the timestamp of the file
versus the package, and only checks at the modification year.
To generate the HTML version of the manpage, both programs use the
/usr/lib/w3m/cgi-bin/w3mman2html.cgi
shipped with the
w3m package.
Seach is operated by a custom Python script that looks through manpages filenames or uses Google to do a full text search.
dgilman codebase¶
A new codebase written by dgilman is available in
github. It is a simple Python
script with a sqlite backend. It extracts the tarfile with
dpkg --fsys-tarfile
then parses it with the Python tarfile
library. It uses rather complicated regexes to find manpages and stores
various apropos and metadata about manpages in the sqlite database. All
manpages are unconditionnally extracted.
Contributing¶
The debmans
project welcomes contributions of all sort.
A broader discussion about the service is in the manpages.debian.org wiki page.
Source code¶
The source code should be available in this Gitlab repository. Gitlab was chosen because this project hopes to be reused by other Debian derivatives and we prefer to have a neutral space to develop the software. Gitlab also provides an issue queue to report a new issue.
Debian developers not desiring to use a semi-proprietary platform like Gitlab may still use the collab-maint repository, see CollaborativeMaintenance for more information on how to collaborate on those repositories. The two repositories are synchronized every hour.
Issues, feature requests and security¶
Patches can be sent by email (see below) or with Gitlab Merge Requests.
Security issues can be privately reported on Gitlab or directly to the author, at anarcat@debian.org. You can use this OpenPGP public key to encrypt messages for confidential security issues:
8DC9 01CE 6414 6C04 8AD5 0FBB 7921 5252 7B75 921E
Test suite¶
Make sure you run tests before you send a patch. Also add tests for new functionalities you add or for bugs you find. Tests are done with pytest:
py.test
Test coverage can be verified with:
py.test --cov debmans
Exact lines lacking test coverage are available in the HTML report that can be generated with:
py.test --cov debmans --cov-report html
The test suite requires the dget
and dpkg-scansources
commands
from the devscripts package to build a test
mirror. Network access is required if packages are not locally cached
in /var/cache/apt/archives
or where dget
can find them (see
DGET_PATH
in the dget(1)
manpage).
Release process¶
make sure tests pass (see above for details):
py.test
create a signed and annotated tag:
git tag -s x.y.z
build and test Python “wheel”:
python setup.py bdist_wheel sudo pip install dist/*.whl debmans --version debmans -m /var/cache/apt/archives -o html -v --progress extract render site serve sudo pip uninstall debmans
push commits and tags to the git repository:
git push git push --tags
publish Python “wheel” on PyPI:
twine upload dist/*
announce on debian-doc@lists.debian.org
API¶
This is the API documentation of Debmans. It should be stable across major releases. See the Design document for more details about the design.
Todo
the click
module decorators make all the
click.command()
functions hidden from Sphinx. This is
presumably because the signature changes from a func to a
cls, but remains to be confirmed.
Extractor¶
The extractor processes Debian packages and extracts specific patterns into a target directory. It uses a cache file that is named according to the package name and version to avoid the costly operation of opening the same package file multiple times.
Renderer¶
The Renderer module takes care of turning extracted documentation into HTML format. It uses Jinja templates and simple timestamp-based caching.
Main entry point¶
The main entry point of debmans
is in the debmans.__main__
module. This is to make it possible to call debmans
directly from
the source code through the Python interpreter with:
python -m debmans
All this code is here rather than in __init__.py
to avoid
requiring too many dependencies in the base module, which contains
useful metadata for setup.py
.
This uses the click
module to define the base command and
options, which then get passed to subcommands through the obj
parameter, see pass_obj
in the click documentation.
Logger¶
This is a simple helper module to configure the logging
module
consistently.
Utilities¶
Those are various utilities reused in multiple modules that did not fit anywhere else.
various utilities for debmans
-
debmans.utils.
find_parent_module
()[source]¶ find the name of a the first module calling this module
if we cannot find it, we return the current module’s name (__name__) instead.
-
debmans.utils.
find_static_file
(path)[source]¶ locate a file in the distribution
this will look in the shipped files in the package
this assumes the files are at the root of the package or the source tree (if not packaged)
this does not check if the file actually exists.
Parameters: path (str) – path for the file, relative to the source tree root Returns: the absolute path to the file
Remaining work¶
Those are the known issues and limitations of the debmans
software,
serving as an internal, ad-hoc issue tracker.
Blocking¶
Those are the things that need to be done to complete the restoration of the manpages service.
- test run on manziarly
- requires access to manpages group? see RT#6485
- missing dependencies to run properly (even as plain user): setuptools, click, apt, debian, patch to mirror/debian.org.git
- setup virtual host
configuration, include:
- redirections for previous links (see man-cgi/INSTALL and maybe more)
- 404 handler to point to 404.html
- edit cii badge when done, future section
- CSP and various other SSL flags?
- provide DSA team with Puppet ruleset (see dsa-puppet manifests) or config documentation
- ask DSA to deploy the new code, test
- if it works, fix the
manpages.debian.org
DNS to point to the static.d.o DNS. at this point, the MVP is in place
Important¶
Those are not part of the Minimum Viable Product, but would be important to implement to make this software complete.
- search functionality, in that order
- whatis(1): find manpages by name (done with custom Javascript)
- apropos(1): find manpages by description
- full text search
Nice to have¶
Those are not really necessary but could improve the service.
- unify site and render? a .mdwn file is like a .1.gz file, basically, except it’s not extracted from a .deb
- 100% test coverage (about 80% now), edit cii badge when done (quality section)
- move
apt_cache
optimizations upstream - rotated –logfile
- add sections browser to the index page?
- debian packaging, edit cii badge when done (future and other sections)
- use tox to test against different py envs
- CII suggestions, edit cii badge
when done:
- continuous integration through Gitlab CI? (quality section)
- hook pyflakes in test suite (quality section)
- static code analysis with pylint (analysis section)
- i18n: we parse all languages, but should auto-detect the web browser’s language with fallbacks and everything. Apache auto-negociation? Could be like debian.org language menus...
- embed test suite in main program
- consider a plugin system for extending to more than manpages, would
provide the default for
--plugin
- pluggy: used by py.test, tox and devpi
- yapsy
- PluginBase
- plugnplay
- SO also suggests using the standard library
imp.load_module()
or just the builtin__import__()
Possible optimizations¶
Optimization ideas:
- extract only targeted files from the archive instead of iterating over it? not sure it’s an improvement...
- use os.scandir() where relevant, instead of os.walk() and stat
- use multiprocessor.Pool for background job rendering? maybe by firing up rendering as soon as pages are created
- use md5sums to check if files were modified, edit cii badge when implemented (security section)
- pre-compile all regexes
Those will be implemented as needed, remember:
Premature optimization is the root of all evil. – Donald Knuth
Internal code tasks¶
Those are todo
items extracted from the code. Priority of those is
indeterminate unless otherwise noted.
Todo
the click
module decorators make all the
click.command()
functions hidden from Sphinx. This is
presumably because the signature changes from a func to a
cls, but remains to be confirmed.
(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/debmans/checkouts/1.0.0/doc/api.rst, line 8.)
License¶
GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE¶
Version 3, 19 November 2007
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. http://fsf.org/
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble¶
The GNU Affero General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works, specifically designed to ensure cooperation with the community in the case of network server software.
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, our General Public Licenses are intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program–to make sure it remains free software for all its users.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.
Developers that use our General Public Licenses protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
A secondary benefit of defending all users’ freedom is that improvements made in alternate versions of the program, if they receive widespread use, become available for other developers to incorporate. Many developers of free software are heartened and encouraged by the resulting cooperation. However, in the case of software used on network servers, this result may fail to come about. The GNU General Public License permits making a modified version and letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its source code to the public.
The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.
An older license, called the Affero General Public License and published by Affero, was designed to accomplish similar goals. This is a different license, not a version of the Affero GPL, but Affero has released a new version of the Affero GPL which permits relicensing under this license.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS¶
0. Definitions.¶
“This License” refers to version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License.
“Copyright” also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of works, such as semiconductor masks.
“The Program” refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is addressed as “you”. “Licensees” and “recipients” may be individuals or organizations.
To “modify” a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a “modified version” of the earlier work or a work “based on” the earlier work.
A “covered work” means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program.
To “propagate” a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying, distribution (with or without modification), making available to the public, and in some countries other activities as well.
To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
An interactive user interface displays “Appropriate Legal Notices” to the extent that it includes a convenient and prominently visible feature that (1) displays an appropriate copyright notice, and (2) tells the user that there is no warranty for the work (except to the extent that warranties are provided), that licensees may convey the work under this License, and how to view a copy of this License. If the interface presents a list of user commands or options, such as a menu, a prominent item in the list meets this criterion.
1. Source Code.¶
The “source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. “Object code” means any non-source form of a work.
A “Standard Interface” means an interface that either is an official standard defined by a recognized standards body, or, in the case of interfaces specified for a particular programming language, one that is widely used among developers working in that language.
The “System Libraries” of an executable work include anything, other than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface for which an implementation is available to the public in source code form. A “Major Component”, in this context, means a major essential component (kernel, window system, and so on) of the specific operating system (if any) on which the executable work runs, or a compiler used to produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run it.
The “Corresponding Source” for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities. However, it does not include the work’s System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally available free programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but which are not part of the work. For example, Corresponding Source includes interface definition files associated with source files for the work, and the source code for shared libraries and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is specifically designed to require, such as by intimate data communication or control flow between those subprograms and other parts of the work.
The Corresponding Source need not include anything that users can regenerate automatically from other parts of the Corresponding Source.
The Corresponding Source for a work in source code form is that same work.
2. Basic Permissions.¶
All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program. The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a covered work. This License acknowledges your rights of fair use or other equivalent, as provided by copyright law.
You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you.
Conveying under any other circumstances is permitted solely under the conditions stated below. Sublicensing is not allowed; section 10 makes it unnecessary.
3. Protecting Users’ Legal Rights From Anti-Circumvention Law.¶
No covered work shall be deemed part of an effective technological measure under any applicable law fulfilling obligations under article 11 of the WIPO copyright treaty adopted on 20 December 1996, or similar laws prohibiting or restricting circumvention of such measures.
When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work’s users, your or third parties’ legal rights to forbid circumvention of technological measures.
4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.¶
You may convey verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.
5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.¶
You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
- The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.
- The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is released under this License and any conditions added under section 7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to “keep intact all notices”.
- You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
- If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so.
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.
6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.¶
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways:
- Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by the Corresponding Source fixed on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange.
- Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the product that is covered by this License, on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.
- Convey individual copies of the object code with a copy of the written offer to provide the Corresponding Source. This alternative is allowed only occasionally and noncommercially, and only if you received the object code with such an offer, in accord with subsection 6b.
- Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
- Convey the object code using peer-to-peer transmission, provided you inform other peers where the object code and Corresponding Source of the work are being offered to the general public at no charge under subsection 6d.
A separable portion of the object code, whose source code is excluded from the Corresponding Source as a System Library, need not be included in conveying the object code work.
A “User Product” is either (1) a “consumer product”, which means any tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family, or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for incorporation into a dwelling. In determining whether a product is a consumer product, doubtful cases shall be resolved in favor of coverage. For a particular product received by a particular user, “normally used” refers to a typical or common use of that class of product, regardless of the status of the particular user or of the way in which the particular user actually uses, or expects or is expected to use, the product. A product is a consumer product regardless of whether the product has substantial commercial, industrial or non-consumer uses, unless such uses represent the only significant mode of use of the product.
“Installation Information” for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM).
The requirement to provide Installation Information does not include a requirement to continue to provide support service, warranty, or updates for a work that has been modified or installed by the recipient, or for the User Product in which it has been modified or installed. Access to a network may be denied when the modification itself materially and adversely affects the operation of the network or violates the rules and protocols for communication across the network.
Corresponding Source conveyed, and Installation Information provided, in accord with this section must be in a format that is publicly documented (and with an implementation available to the public in source code form), and must require no special password or key for unpacking, reading or copying.
7. Additional Terms.¶
“Additional permissions” are terms that supplement the terms of this License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions. Additional permissions that are applicable to the entire Program shall be treated as though they were included in this License, to the extent that they are valid under applicable law. If additional permissions apply only to part of the Program, that part may be used separately under those permissions, but the entire Program remains governed by this License without regard to the additional permissions.
When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option remove any additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of it. (Additional permissions may be written to require their own removal in certain cases when you modify the work.) You may place additional permissions on material, added by you to a covered work, for which you have or can give appropriate copyright permission.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you add to a covered work, you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of that material) supplement the terms of this License with terms:
- Disclaiming warranty or limiting liability differently from the terms of sections 15 and 16 of this License; or
- Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it; or
- Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in reasonable ways as different from the original version; or
- Limiting the use for publicity purposes of names of licensors or authors of the material; or
- Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trademarks, or service marks; or
- Requiring indemnification of licensors and authors of that material by anyone who conveys the material (or modified versions of it) with contractual assumptions of liability to the recipient, for any liability that these contractual assumptions directly impose on those licensors and authors.
All other non-permissive additional terms are considered “further restrictions” within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term. If a license document contains a further restriction but permits relicensing or conveying under this License, you may add to a covered work material governed by the terms of that license document, provided that the further restriction does not survive such relicensing or conveying.
If you add terms to a covered work in accord with this section, you must place, in the relevant source files, a statement of the additional terms that apply to those files, or a notice indicating where to find the applicable terms.
Additional terms, permissive or non-permissive, may be stated in the form of a separately written license, or stated as exceptions; the above requirements apply either way.
8. Termination.¶
You may not propagate or modify a covered work except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License (including any patent licenses granted under the third paragraph of section 11).
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have been terminated and not permanently reinstated, you do not qualify to receive new licenses for the same material under section 10.
9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.¶
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.¶
Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties with this License.
An “entity transaction” is a transaction transferring control of an organization, or substantially all assets of one, or subdividing an organization, or merging organizations. If propagation of a covered work results from an entity transaction, each party to that transaction who receives a copy of the work also receives whatever licenses to the work the party’s predecessor in interest had or could give under the previous paragraph, plus a right to possession of the Corresponding Source of the work from the predecessor in interest, if the predecessor has it or can get it with reasonable efforts.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.
11. Patents.¶
A “contributor” is a copyright holder who authorizes use under this License of the Program or a work on which the Program is based. The work thus licensed is called the contributor’s “contributor version”.
A contributor’s “essential patent claims” are all patent claims owned or controlled by the contributor, whether already acquired or hereafter acquired, that would be infringed by some manner, permitted by this License, of making, using, or selling its contributor version, but do not include claims that would be infringed only as a consequence of further modification of the contributor version. For purposes of this definition, “control” includes the right to grant patent sublicenses in a manner consistent with the requirements of this License.
Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor’s essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version.
In the following three paragraphs, a “patent license” is any express agreement or commitment, however denominated, not to enforce a patent (such as an express permission to practice a patent or covenant not to sue for patent infringement). To “grant” such a patent license to a party means to make such an agreement or commitment not to enforce a patent against the party.
If you convey a covered work, knowingly relying on a patent license, and the Corresponding Source of the work is not available for anyone to copy, free of charge and under the terms of this License, through a publicly available network server or other readily accessible means, then you must either (1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so available, or (2) arrange to deprive yourself of the benefit of the patent license for this particular work, or (3) arrange, in a manner consistent with the requirements of this License, to extend the patent license to downstream recipients. “Knowingly relying” means you have actual knowledge that, but for the patent license, your conveying the covered work in a country, or your recipient’s use of the covered work in a country, would infringe one or more identifiable patents in that country that you have reason to believe are valid.
If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or arrangement, you convey, or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a covered work, and grant a patent license to some of the parties receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate, modify or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license you grant is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered work and works based on it.
A patent license is “discriminatory” if it does not include within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license (a) in connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or copies made from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007.
Nothing in this License shall be construed as excluding or limiting any implied license or other defenses to infringement that may otherwise be available to you under applicable patent law.
12. No Surrender of Others’ Freedom.¶
If conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot convey a covered work so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not convey it at all. For example, if you agree to terms that obligate you to collect a royalty for further conveying from those to whom you convey the Program, the only way you could satisfy both those terms and this License would be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.
13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.¶
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
14. Revised Versions of this License.¶
The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU Affero General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies that a certain numbered version of the GNU Affero General Public License “or any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that numbered version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of the GNU Affero General Public License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
If the Program specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of the GNU Affero General Public License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Program.
Later license versions may give you additional or different permissions. However, no additional obligations are imposed on any author or copyright holder as a result of your choosing to follow a later version.
15. Disclaimer of Warranty.¶
THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
16. Limitation of Liability.¶
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
17. Interpretation of Sections 15 and 16.¶
If the disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liability provided above cannot be given local legal effect according to their terms, reviewing courts shall apply local law that most closely approximates an absolute waiver of all civil liability in connection with the Program, unless a warranty or assumption of liability accompanies a copy of the Program in return for a fee.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs¶
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively state the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If your software can interact with users remotely through a computer network, you should also make sure that it provides a way for users to get its source. For example, if your program is a web application, its interface could display a “Source” link that leads users to an archive of the code. There are many ways you could offer source, and different solutions will be better for different programs; see section 13 for the specific requirements.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or school, if any, to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. For more information on this, and how to apply and follow the GNU AGPL, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.