REUSE-LINT(1)

🎀 REUSE-LINT(1) — the reuse manual, bestie edition 🎀

okay so this is the page for reuse-lint, part of the reuse manual fam — and no cap, it's the vibe-check tool for your whole project. Let's get into it 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

reuse-lint — verify whether a project is compliant with the REUSE Specification. that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it thoroughly 🫶

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

reuse lint [options]

literally just that. so clean, so iconic.

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

reuse-lint verifies whether a project is compliant with the REUSE Specification located at https://reuse.software/spec. she reads your files, she checks your receipts, she tells you if you're slaying or if you need to go fix some stuff. no judgment (okay a little judgment, in the nicest way possible 💖).

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🌈 CRITERIA 🌈

these are the criteria that the linter checks against. think of it as her checklist — she goes down the list, item by item, and if something's off, she will let you know 😭

💀 Bad licenses

licenses that are found in LICENSES/ that are not found in the SPDX License List, or that do not start with LicenseRef-, are bad licenses. yeah. she said what she said.

🥀 Deprecated licenses

licenses whose SPDX License Identifier has been deprecated by SPDX. they were cute in 2015, but the vibes have expired, bestie.

🍓 Licenses without file extension

these are licenses whose file names are a valid SPDX License Identifier, but which do not have a file extension. valid name, missing the little suffix. it's giving "almost perfect."

💔 Missing licenses

a license which is referred to in a comment header, but which is not found in the LICENSES/ directory. you promised a license and didn't bring it. not the move 🙈

🧚 Unused licenses

a license found in the LICENSES/ directory, but which is not referred to in any comment header. she's just sitting there, uninvited to the party, lowkey.

😭 Read errors

not technically a criterion, but files that cannot be read by the operating system are read errors, and need to be fixed. this one's on the OS, not on you, but like… it still has to be fixed, fr fr.

👑 Invalid SPDX License Expressions

SPDX License Expressions that follow SPDX-License-Identifier tags which are not parseable as valid SPDX. the parser looked at it and was like "girl what" 💀

⭐ Files without copyright and license information

every file needs to have copyright and licensing information associated with it. periodt. the REUSE Specification details several ways of doing it — by and large, these are the methods:

• placing tags in the header of the file.
• placing tags in a .license file adjacent to the file.
• putting the information in a REUSE.toml file, which must be in an ancestor directory relative to the file.
• putting the information in the .reuse/dep5 file. (deprecated — she's retired, but still hangs around.)

if a file is found that does not have copyright and/or license information associated with it, then the project is not compliant. that's the whole rule. no exceptions, no "but I only forgot one file" — she counts all of them 💅

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🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

• -q, --quiet — do not print anything to STDOUT. she goes silent mode. no output, just vibes (and exit codes).
• -j, --json — output the results of the lint as JSON. for when you want your results machine-readable and structurally immaculate 🎀
• -p, --plain — output the results of the lint as descriptive text. the text is valid Markdown. this option is the default, so if you don't say anything, this is what you get ✨
• -l, --lines — output one line per error, prefixed by the file path. quick, scannable, one problem per line — a little line-item receipt of your sins 💀
• --help — display help and exit. the classic. the icon. always there when you need her 🫶

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Free Software Foundation Europe — genuinely out here doing the most for licensing clarity, and we love them for it 👑

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🧵 COPYRIGHT 🧵

2026, Free Software Foundation Europe. CC-BY-SA-4.0.

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and that's the whole page!! ok bye bestie, go run reuse lint on your project and let her tell you how you're doing 🌸💖

version 6.2.0 · dated Jul 16, 2026 · laterrr 💅✨