cli/docs/license-compliance.md

License Compliance

GitHub CLI complies with the software licenses of its dependencies. This document explains how license compliance is maintained.

Overview

Third-party license information is embedded into the gh binary at build time using google/go-licenses. Each release binary contains the correct license listing for its target platform (GOOS/GOARCH), since the set of dependencies can vary by platform.

Viewing License Information

Users can view the third-party license information for their installed binary:

gh licenses

This opens a pager displaying all Go dependencies and their licenses, with links to the source code of each dependency.

How It Works

1. The script/licenses script accepts a GOOS and GOARCH and generates a license report using go-licenses report
2. The report is written to internal/licenses/embed/third-party-licenses.md
3. This file is embedded into the binary via go:embed in internal/licenses/licenses.go
4. Goreleaser pre-build hooks call script/licenses with the correct platform before each build

Local Development

During local development (go build), the embedded file contains a placeholder message. To generate real license information for your current platform:

make licenses

This runs go-licenses report for your host GOOS/GOARCH and writes the output to the embed path.