Application Settings

ScanCode.io is configured with environment variables stored in a .env file.

The .env file is created at the root of the ScanCode.io codebase during its installation. You can configure your preferences using the following settings in the .env file.

Note

ScanCode.io is based on the Django web framework and its settings system. The list of settings available in Django is documented at Django Settings.

Tip

Settings specific to ScanCode.io are all prefixed with SCANCODEIO_.

Restarting the services is required following any changes to .env:

docker compose restart web worker

Instance settings

DATABASE

The database can be configured using the following settings:

SCANCODEIO_DB_HOST=localhost
SCANCODEIO_DB_NAME=scancodeio
SCANCODEIO_DB_USER=user
SCANCODEIO_DB_PASSWORD=password
SCANCODEIO_DB_PORT=5432

SCANCODEIO_REQUIRE_AUTHENTICATION

By default, the ScanCode.io Web UI and REST API are available without any authentication.

The authentication system can be enable with this settings:

SCANCODEIO_REQUIRE_AUTHENTICATION=True

Once enabled, all the Web UI views and REST API endpoints will force the user to login to gain access.

A management command $ scanpipe create-user <username> is available to create users and generate their API key for authentication.

See Authentication for details on using the API key authentication system in the REST API.

SCANCODEIO_WORKSPACE_LOCATION

This setting defines the workspace location of a given project. The workspace is the directory where all of the project’s files are stored , such as input, codebase, and output files:

SCANCODEIO_WORKSPACE_LOCATION=/var/scancodeio/workspace/

It defaults to a var/ directory in the local ScanCode.io codebase.

See Project workspace for more details.

SCANCODEIO_CONFIG_DIR

The location of the .scancode/ configuration directory within the project codebase.

Default: .scancode

This directory allows to provide configuration files and customization for a ScanCode.io project directly through the codebase files.

For example, to provide a custom attribution template to your project, add it in a .scancode/ directory located at the root of your codebase before uploading it to ScanCode.io. The expected location of the attribution template is:

.scancode/templates/attribution.html

SCANCODEIO_PROCESSES

By default, multiprocessing is enabled and configured to use an optimal number of CPUs available on the machine. You can control the number of parallel processes available to ScanCode.io using the SCANCODEIO_PROCESSES setting:

SCANCODEIO_PROCESSES=4

Multiprocessing can be disabled entirely using “0”:

SCANCODEIO_PROCESSES=0

To disable both multiprocessing and threading, use “-1”:

SCANCODEIO_PROCESSES=-1

Note

Multiprocessing and threading are disabled by default on operating system where the multiprocessing start method is not “fork”, such as on macOS.

SCANCODEIO_ASYNC

When enabled, pipeline runs are executed asynchronously, meaning that users can continue using the app while the pipeline are run in the background.

The ASYNC mode is enabled by default in a “Run with Docker” configuration but disabled in a “Local development” setup.

It is possible to enable ASYNC mode in a “local development” setup with the following setting:

SCANCODEIO_ASYNC=True

Once enabled, pipeline runs will be sent to a task queue instead of being executed synchronously in the web server process.

Warning

The ASYNC mode required a Redis server and running a tasks worker using $ make worker.

On macOS, the ASYNC mode requires the following line in your environment:

export OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY=YES

SCANCODEIO_TASK_TIMEOUT

Maximum time allowed for a pipeline to complete. The pipeline run will be stopped and marked as failed if that limit is reached.

The value is a string with specify unit including hour, minute, second (e.g. “1h”, “3m”, “5s”):

SCANCODEIO_TASK_TIMEOUT=24h

Default: 24h

SCANCODEIO_SCAN_FILE_TIMEOUT

Maximum time allowed for a file to be analyzed when scanning a codebase.

The value unit is second and is defined as an integer:

SCANCODEIO_SCAN_FILE_TIMEOUT=120

Default: 120 (2 minutes)

SCANCODEIO_SCAN_MAX_FILE_SIZE

Maximum file size allowed for a file to be scanned when scanning a codebase.

The value unit is bytes and is defined as an integer, see the following example of setting this at 5 MB:

SCANCODEIO_SCAN_MAX_FILE_SIZE=5242880

Default: None (all files will be scanned)

SCANCODEIO_PIPELINES_DIRS

This setting defines any additional locations that ScanCode.io will search in for pipelines. It usually includes a list of comma-separated strings containing full paths of additional pipelines directories:

SCANCODEIO_PIPELINES_DIRS=/var/scancodeio/pipelines/,/home/user/pipelines/

SCANCODEIO_POLICIES_FILE

This setting defines the location of the policies file, or policies.yml. A valid policies file is required to enable compliance-related features.

license_policies:
-   license_key: mit
    label: Approved License
    compliance_alert: ''
-   license_key: mpl-2.0
    label: Restricted License
    compliance_alert: warning
-   license_key: gpl-3.0
    label: Prohibited License
    compliance_alert: error

• Licenses are referenced by the license_key.

• A Policy is defined with label and compliance_alert.

• The compliance_alert accepts 3 values: ‘’ for an empty string, warning, and error.

Note

When the policy feature is enabled, the compliance_alert values are displayed in the UI and returned in all downloadable results.

Tip

Check out the License Policies and Compliance Alerts tutorial for in-depth coverage of this feature.

SCANCODEIO_PAGINATE_BY

The number of objects display per page for each object type can be customized with the following setting:

SCANCODEIO_PAGINATE_BY=project=30,error=50,resource=100,package=100,dependency=100

SCANCODEIO_REST_API_PAGE_SIZE

A numeric value indicating the number of objects returned per page in the REST API:

SCANCODEIO_REST_API_PAGE_SIZE=100

Default: 50

Warning

Using a large page size may have an impact on performances.

SCANCODEIO_LOG_LEVEL

By default, only a minimum of logging messages is displayed in the console, mostly to provide some progress about pipeline run execution.

Default: INFO

The DEBUG value can be provided to this setting to see all ScanCode.io debug messages to help track down configuration issues for example. This mode can be enabled globally through the .env file:

SCANCODEIO_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG

Or, in the context of running a scanpipe command:

$ SCANCODEIO_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG bin/scanpipe [command]

The web server can be started in DEBUG mode with:

$ SCANCODEIO_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG make run

SCANCODEIO_SITE_URL

The base URL of the ScanCode.io application instance. This setting is required to generate absolute URLs referencing objects within the application, such as in webhook notifications.

The value should be a fully qualified URL, including the scheme (e.g., https://).

Example configuration in the .env file:

SCANCODEIO_SITE_URL=https://scancode.example.com/

Default: "" (empty)

SCANCODEIO_GLOBAL_WEBHOOK

This setting defines a global webhook that will be automatically added as a WebhookSubscription for each new project.

The webhook is configured as a dictionary and must include a target_url. Additional options control when the webhook is triggered and what data is included in the payload.

Example configuration in the .env file:

SCANCODEIO_GLOBAL_WEBHOOK=target_url=https://webhook.url,trigger_on_each_run=False,include_summary=True,include_results=False

The available options are:

• target_url (required): The URL where the webhook payload will be sent.

• trigger_on_each_run (default: False): If True, the webhook is triggered on every pipeline run.

• include_summary (default: False): If True, a summary of the pipeline run results is included in the payload.

• include_results (default: False): If True, detailed scan results are included in the payload.

If this setting is provided, ScanCode.io will create a webhook subscription only for newly created projects that are not clones.

Default: {} (no global webhook is set)

TIME_ZONE

A string representing the time zone for the current ScanCode.io installation. By default the UTC time zone is used:

TIME_ZONE=Europe/Paris

Note

You can view a detailed list of time zones here.

External services (integrations)

PURLDB

A public instance of PurlDB is accessible at https://public.purldb.io/.

Alternatively, you can deploy your own instance of PurlDB by following the instructions provided in the documentation at https://purldb.readthedocs.io/.

To configure your local environment, set the PURLDB_URL in your .env file:

PURLDB_URL=https://public.purldb.io/

While using the public PurlDB instance, providing an API key is optional. However, if authentication is enabled on your PurlDB instance, you can provide the API key using PURLDB_API_KEY:

PURLDB_API_KEY=insert_your_api_key_here

Note

Once the PurlDB is configured, a new “PurlDB” tab will be available in the discovered package details view.

VULNERABLECODE

You have the option to either deploy your instance of VulnerableCode or connect to the public instance.

To configure your local environment, set the VULNERABLECODE_URL in your .env file:

VULNERABLECODE_URL=https://public.vulnerablecode.io/

When using the public VulnerableCode instance, providing an API key is optional. However, if authentication is enabled on your VulnerableCode instance, you can provide the API key using VULNERABLECODE_API_KEY:

VULNERABLECODE_API_KEY=insert_your_api_key_here

MATCHCODE.IO

There is currently no public instance of MatchCode.io.

Alternatively, you can deploy your own instance of MatchCode.io by following the instructions provided in the documentation at https://purldb.readthedocs.io/.

To configure your local environment, set the MATCHCODEIO_URL in your .env file:

MATCHCODEIO_URL=https://<Address to MatchCode.io host>/

If authentication is enabled on your MatchCode.io instance, you can provide the API key using MATCHCODEIO_API_KEY:

MATCHCODEIO_API_KEY=insert_your_api_key_here

FEDERATEDCODE

FederatedCode is decentralized and federated metadata for software applications stored in Git repositories.

To configure your local environment, set the following in your .env file:

FEDERATEDCODE_GIT_ACCOUNT_URL=https://<Address to your git account>/

FEDERATEDCODE_GIT_SERVICE_TOKEN=insert_your_git_api_key_here

Also provide the name and email that will be used to sign off on commits to Git repositories:

FEDERATEDCODE_GIT_SERVICE_NAME=insert_name_here

FEDERATEDCODE_GIT_SERVICE_EMAIL=insert_email_here

Fetch Authentication

Several settings are available to define the credentials required to access your private files, depending on the authentication type: Basic, Digest, Token header, etc.

Note

The provided credentials are enabled for all projects on the ScanCode.io instance.

Warning

Ensure that the provided host values are fully qualified, including the domain and subdomain.

SCANCODEIO_FETCH_BASIC_AUTH

You can provide credentials for input URLs protected by Basic Authentication using the host=user,password syntax:

SCANCODEIO_FETCH_BASIC_AUTH="www.host1.com=user,password;www.host2.com=user,password;"

SCANCODEIO_FETCH_DIGEST_AUTH

You can provide credentials for input URLs protected by Digest Authentication using the host=user,password syntax:

SCANCODEIO_FETCH_DIGEST_AUTH="www.host1.com=user,password;www.host2.com=user,password;"

SCANCODEIO_FETCH_HEADERS

When authentication credentials can be provided through HTTP request headers, you can use the following syntax:

SCANCODEIO_FETCH_HEADERS="www.host1.com=Header1=value,Header2=value;"

Example for a GitHub private repository:

SCANCODEIO_FETCH_HEADERS="raw.github.com=Authorization=token <YOUR_TOKEN>"

SCANCODEIO_NETRC_LOCATION

If your credentials are stored in a .netrc file, you can provide its location on disk using:

SCANCODEIO_NETRC_LOCATION="~/.netrc"

If you are deploying ScanCode.io using Docker and you wish to use a netrc file, you can provide it to the Docker container by moving the netrc file to /etc/scancodeio/.netrc and then updating the .env file with the line:

SCANCODEIO_NETRC_LOCATION="/etc/scancodeio/.netrc"

SCANCODEIO_SKOPEO_CREDENTIALS

You can define the username and password for Skopeo to access containers private registries using the host=user:password syntax:

SCANCODEIO_SKOPEO_CREDENTIALS="host1=user:password,host2=user:password"

SCANCODEIO_SKOPEO_AUTHFILE_LOCATION

Specify the path of the Skopeo authentication file using the following setting:

SCANCODEIO_SKOPEO_AUTHFILE_LOCATION="/path/to/auth.json"

Job Queue and Workers

ScanCode.io leverages the RQ (Redis Queue) Python library for job queuing and background processing with workers.

By default, it is configured to use the “redis” service in the Docker Compose stack.

For deployments where Redis is hosted on a separate system (e.g., a cloud-based deployment or a remote Redis server), the Redis instance used by RQ can be customized using the following settings:

SCANCODEIO_RQ_REDIS_HOST=localhost
SCANCODEIO_RQ_REDIS_PORT=6379
SCANCODEIO_RQ_REDIS_DB=0
SCANCODEIO_RQ_REDIS_USERNAME=<username>
SCANCODEIO_RQ_REDIS_PASSWORD=<password>
SCANCODEIO_RQ_REDIS_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT=360

To enhance security, it is recommended to enable SSL for Redis connections. SSL is disabled by default but can be enabled with the following configuration:

SCANCODEIO_RQ_REDIS_SSL=True