Provenant

Why Provenant? · Choose a Workflow · Install · CLI Guide · Benchmarks · Supported Formats · Architecture

Provenant is a fast, Rust-based code scanner for licenses, copyrights, package metadata, file metadata, and related provenance data, focused on correctness, safe static parsing, and native execution.

Across documented benchmark targets, Provenant is frequently about an order of magnitude faster than ScanCode Toolkit, whose scanning engine it ports to Rust and builds on. On top of that it adds broader package and dependency extraction, cleaner results, and CI-ready compliance gating — see Why Provenant?.

The same astral-sh/uv scan, identical flags (--license --package), one process each: Provenant finishes in seconds while ScanCode is still going. Full comparisons: benchmarks.

Important

Project status: production-usable and compatibility-focused. Provenant targets parity for documented ScanCode-compatible workflows and output formats.

Quick Start

cargo install provenant-cli
provenant scan --json-pp - --license --package /path/to/repo

On macOS or Linux you can also brew install getprovenant/tap/provenant. Prefer release binaries? Download precompiled archives from GitHub Releases.

Why Provenant?

• Benchmark-backed speedups — frequently about an order of magnitude faster than ScanCode on recorded same-host runs
• Broader package and dependency extraction across many ecosystems, with intentional parser improvements on surfaces that overlap ScanCode
• Documented parser and detection fixes that cut noisy results and false-positive classes, including better bare-word GPL/LGPL clue handling
• CI license-compliance gating — policy severities with a build-failing --fail-on gate and SARIF output for the code-scanning UI
• Native workflows: --incremental cache reuse, --paths-file changed-file scans, and long-lived HTTP service mode via provenant serve
• Single self-contained binary with parallel native execution
• Security-first static parsing — no execution of scanned code or package-manager code, with bounded resource use

Choose a Workflow

If you need to...	Start here	Next doc
Run a one-off CLI scan	provenant scan --json-pp - --license --package /path/to/repo	CLI Guide
Scan explicit changed files in CI or automation	Use --paths-file with one native scan root	CLI Guide
Run a scan in a container	docker run -v "$PWD:/src" ghcr.io/getprovenant/provenant scan /src --json-pp -	Container Image
Run a scan from a GitHub Actions workflow	uses: getprovenant/provenant-action@v1	provenant-action
Gate CI on disallowed licenses (fail the build, SARIF)	--license-policy policy.yml --fail-on error	CLI Guide
Reuse a warm process through HTTP	provenant serve --help	Serve API Guide
Embed Provenant in a Rust application	Use the provenant library target from provenant-cli	Library Guide
Evaluate Provenant with an existing ScanCode workflow	Start from Provenant's compatibility and workflow-difference notes	Evaluating Provenant with ScanCode workflows

Relationship to ScanCode

Provenant is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ScanCode Toolkit, AboutCode, or nexB Inc.

Topic	Provenant
Implementation	Independent Rust scanner; originally a port of the ScanCode engine, developed substantially beyond it
Compatibility goal	Strong compatibility with ScanCode workflows and output semantics where practical
Upstream data	Uses the upstream ScanCode license and rule data as a foundational dataset
Evaluation path	For teams evaluating Provenant against existing compatible workflows, see the evaluation guide for notes and differences

Install

Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew install getprovenant/tap/provenant

Installs a prebuilt provenant binary from the Provenant tap; covers macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux (arm64 and x86_64).

From Crates.io

Install the crates.io package provenant-cli:

cargo install provenant-cli

This installs the provenant command-line binary.

Download Precompiled Binary

Download the release archive for your platform from the GitHub Releases page.

Extract the archive and place the binary somewhere on your PATH.

On Linux and macOS:

tar xzf provenant-*.tar.gz
sudo mv provenant /usr/local/bin/

On Windows, extract the .zip release and add provenant.exe to your PATH.

Container Image

Prebuilt, statically linked multi-arch images (linux/amd64, linux/arm64) are published to the GitHub Container Registry as ghcr.io/getprovenant/provenant, tagged with the full version (e.g. 0.2.5), the major.minor series (e.g. 0.2), and latest:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/src" ghcr.io/getprovenant/provenant:latest \
  scan /src --json-pp - --license --package

The image entrypoint is the provenant binary, so any CLI arguments can follow the image reference. To scan a project, mount it into the container and pass the mounted path as the scan target.

Build from Source

For a normal source build, you only need the Rust toolchain:

git clone https://github.com/getprovenant/provenant.git
cd provenant
cargo build --release

Cargo places the compiled binary under target/release/.

Note: The binary includes a built-in compact license index. The reference/scancode-toolkit/ submodule is only needed for developers updating the embedded license data, using maintainer commands that depend on it, or maintaining Provenant's built-in license dataset.

Usage

CLI Scanning

provenant scan --json-pp <FILE> [OPTIONS] <INPUT>...

Note

Provenant requires at least one explicit output flag, such as --json-pp - or --json scan-results.json.

For the command tree, run:

provenant --help

For the complete scan-flag surface, run:

provenant scan --help

Example

provenant scan --json-pp scan-results.json --license --package ~/projects/my-codebase --ignore "*.git*" --ignore "target/*" --ignore "node_modules/*"

Use - as FILE to write an output stream to stdout, for example --json-pp -. Multiple output flags can be used in a single run. When using --from-json, you can pass multiple JSON inputs. Native directory scans also support multiple input paths using common-prefix behavior. For guided workflows, flag combinations, cache controls, and stdin-driven file lists, see the CLI Guide.

GitHub Action

To run Provenant from a GitHub Actions workflow, use the getprovenant/provenant-action action, which wraps the published container image:

- uses: actions/checkout@v7
- uses: getprovenant/provenant-action@v1

It can also gate CI on a license policy (fail-on) and upload SARIF findings to the code-scanning UI. See the action README for inputs and examples.

HTTP Service

For the current service shell surface, run:

provenant serve --help

provenant serve runs Provenant as a long-lived HTTP service with warm process reuse, synchronous and asynchronous scan endpoints, and job polling for automation-friendly integrations.

For the HTTP request/response contract and examples, see the Serve API Guide.

Rust Library

If you want to embed Provenant in a Rust application instead of invoking the CLI, use the crates.io package provenant-cli and import the library target as provenant.

For the supported high-level Rust embedding path and dependency setup, see the Library Guide.

Output Formats

Implemented output formats include:

• JSON, including ScanCode-compatible output
• YAML
• JSON Lines
• Debian copyright
• SPDX, Tag-Value and RDF/XML
• CycloneDX, JSON and XML
• HTML report
• Custom template rendering (Jinja2-compatible, with a ScanCode compatibility context)

Documentation

• Library Guide - Programmatic embedding guidance for using Provenant from Rust
• Serve API Guide - HTTP API usage, examples, and current service contract for provenant serve
• Documentation Index - Best starting point for navigating the docs set
• CLI Guide - Common workflows and important flag combinations
• Evaluating Provenant with ScanCode workflows - Compatibility notes and workflow differences for teams evaluating Provenant
• Architecture - System design, processing pipeline, and design decisions
• Output Field Reference - Generated reference for public output records, fields, and presence rules
• Supported Formats - Generated support matrix for package ecosystems and package-adjacent detection surfaces
• How to Add a Parser - Step-by-step guide for adding new parsers
• Testing Strategy - Testing approach and guidelines
• ADRs - Architectural decision records
• Intentional Differences and Improvements - Features where Provenant intentionally differs from or improves on the Python reference

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please feel free to submit a pull request.

For contributor workflow and contribution policy, start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Inbound contributions use the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) 1.1, so commits should be signed off with git commit -s; see DCO and CONTRIBUTING.md for the policy details.

For deeper contributor documentation, see the Documentation Index, How to Add a Parser, and Testing Strategy.

Support and Acknowledgements

Provenant is an independent open source project developed by its contributors. Its development has been made possible in substantial part by support from TNG Technology Consulting GmbH, including paid contributor time on internal non-client work, compute and inference resources provided by TNG's internal GPU cluster, Skainet, and company-funded usage of third-party AI models. Without that support, Provenant would not have been possible in its current scope and form.

A substantial portion of Provenant's development has been contributed by people working on the project as TNG employees, and work on the project has been done both during TNG-supported work time and during personal unpaid time. For a fuller acknowledgement of project support, see ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md.

Upstream Data and Attribution

Provenant relies on the upstream ScanCode Toolkit project by nexB Inc. and the AboutCode community for reference behavior, compatibility validation, and the license and rule data maintained by that ecosystem. Provenant code is licensed under Apache-2.0, with ScanCode-derived engine code carrying upstream attribution in the NOTICE file and in derived source files; included ScanCode-derived rule and license data remains subject to upstream attribution and CC-BY-4.0 terms where applicable. We are grateful to nexB Inc. and the AboutCode community for the reference implementation and the extensive license and copyright research behind it. See NOTICE for preserved upstream attribution notices applicable to materials included in this repository and to distributions that include ScanCode-derived data.

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Provenant contributors.

The Provenant project code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See NOTICE for preserved upstream attribution notices for included ScanCode Toolkit materials.