@@ -445,6 +445,12 @@ not and can not work as people would expect it should:
to let you know, and +not saved+ will appear in the +license files+ field
of the manifest file for this package.
+* +LIBFOO_TAINTS+ shoud be set to YES if a package taints a Buildroot
+ configuration. A Buildroot configuration is tainted when a packages uses
+ external dependencies for which Buildroot cannot clearly recover licensing
+ informations. If a configuration is tainted, it means that the licensing
+ information produced by +make legal-info+ could not be accurate.
+
* +LIBFOO_ACTUAL_SOURCE_TARBALL+ only applies to packages whose
+LIBFOO_SITE+ / +LIBTOO_SOURCE+ pair points to an archive that does
not actually contain source code, but binary code. This a very
@@ -73,6 +73,18 @@ distribution is required).
When you run +make legal-info+, Buildroot produces warnings in the +README+
file to inform you of relevant material that could not be saved.
+Furthermore, a Buildroot configuration could be tainted from a package that uses
+some custom external dependencies from the Buildroot tree. An example could be
+a package manager for a software stack that downloads the required dependencies
+during the building of a package. In such cases, Buildroot cannot check the
+licensing of the downloaded software and thus giving accurate licensing
+informations.
+To check if your configuration is tainted, run:
+
+--------------------
+make check-tainted
+--------------------
+
Finally, keep in mind that the output of +make legal-info+ is based on
declarative statements in each of the packages recipes. The Buildroot
developers try to do their best to keep those declarative statements as
Adding documentation about the usage of LIBFOO_TAINTS and "make check-tainted". Signed-off-by: Angelo Compagnucci <angelo@amarulasolutions.com> --- docs/manual/adding-packages-generic.txt | 6 ++++++ docs/manual/legal-notice.txt | 12 ++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 18 insertions(+)