raimon49/pip-licenses

example cannot simply be version bumped - but uses historical & incompatible version

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#327 opened on Apr 22, 2026

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Description

The Problem & Scope

In the README.md (circa v5.5.5):

https://github.com/raimon49/pip-licenses/blob/2a8cfbc292a7f9b8d3170995ea77aa12e2a37db4/README.md?plain=1#L122-L157

The version 38.5.0 of setuptools is significantly out-of-data (and incompatible/deprecated, as pip-licenses v5.5.5 requires setuptools>=82.0.0), and the contemporary versions of setuptools no-longer yield License: UNKNOWN so this example in the documentation cannot be simply version bumped.


The Constraints

  1. Documentation should be more-or-less contemporary in-order to be useful to users.
  • This does not mean we must keep the bad example(s).
  • This does not mean we just drop the bad example(s).
  • This does mean we can't just leave the paradoxical example as pip show setuptools (see above problem)
  1. For any replacement example(s) would at-least include the additional constraints:
  • Documentation should use examples demonstratively (e.g., should be reproducible by users)
  • The example in this case is about when a particular package does not declare a clear license in its METADATA file, then pip show <some-package> should also show 'License: UNKNOWN'
  • Known vulnerable packages should never be encouraged (albeit not out-right prohibited)
  • This is not an exhaustive list of constraints.

RFC: Further design discussion needed for clear path forward. Namely:

  • Is there a known package that would make a good replacement example?
  • has this become a rare edge-case for version pip-licenses v5.5.5+ ?

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