CycloneDX / CycloneDX/cyclonedx-maven-plugin

Component description misleadingly inherited

Open
#394 6 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Java
Stars
385
Forks
108
Avg merge
17h 31m
Merged PRs (30d)
7

Description

Component descriptions (bom/components/component/description) seem to be inherited. This leads to completely wrong descriptions when a particular Maven module has none. Example:

parent POM#description : I'm the parent of all
  ^
  |
  -- project parent POM#description: <none>
          ^
          |
          -- project module POM#description : <none>

In the CDX the "project module" component will have a <description> of "I'm the parent of all" which is confusing at best.

I am expecting for "project module" to have no description at all as it is also missing in its POM.

Public example

<component type="library" bom-ref="pkg:maven/io.swagger/swagger-annotations@1.6.8?type=jar">
  <group>io.swagger</group>
  <name>swagger-annotations</name>
  <version>1.6.8</version>
  <description>Sonatype helps open source projects to set up Maven repositories on https://oss.sonatype.org/</description>
  <scope>required</scope>

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Reproduce the public Maven example and inspect the generated CycloneDX XML for the module component. Trace how descriptions are resolved through the parent POM hierarchy; done means a module with no description has no component description even when an ancestor POM is described.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
java
Domain
build-system
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.