SharpCrafters Support Forum

Putting PostSharp in Source Control

Author

Message

jpetrie

Posted 6/2/2009 6:42:48 AM

Community Member

Short version: is it legal for an MIT-licensed project that depends on PostSharp to check the PostSharp binaries into its (public) source control repository?

Long version:
I've been evaluating PostSharp and I really like what I see. When at all possible, I prefer to have all of my project dependencies checked in to source control, so that it is possible to build the project from a clean checkout with as little extra tools installed on the machine as possible (ideally just Visual Studio).

This is most easily done when the dependencies in question all have binary-only distributions; PostSharp ships an installer, which is fine, because it seems like it would not be an impossible task for me to copy the files it installs and rig up a custom post-build step to run postsharp.exe as needed.

However, checking in to source control constitutes redistribution if that source control repository is public (which would be the case for the project I'm considering PostSharp for); in other words, redistributing PostSharp build-time components.

Deciphering the licensing is proving a bit tricky. The licensing pages seem to tell me that I'd be safe checking the binaries in, although they are not as clear to me on when the GPL versus the LGPL applies. I realize that a forum like this cannot constitute actual legal advice, but does anybody see an obvious flaw in my understanding of the licensing? Can I check these files in?

(Also, apologies if this is the wrong forum for this sort of thing, it seemed the most appropriate, but I'm new...)

Post #3611