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~~ Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
~~ you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
~~ You may obtain a copy of the License at
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~~      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
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                   --------------------------
                   RAT - A Release Audit Tool
                   --------------------------
                   
Release Audit Tool (RAT)

 Apache RAT is an effort undergoing incubation at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), 
 sponsored by the Incubator PMC. Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects 
 until a further review indicates that the infrastructure, communications, and decision 
 making process have stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF projects.
 While incubation status is not necessarily a reflection of the completeness or stability 
 of the code, it does indicate that the project has yet to be fully endorsed by the ASF.
      
 Release Audit Tool (RAT) is a tool to improve accuracy and efficiency when checking
 releases. It is heuristic in nature: making guesses about possible problems. It
 will produce false positives and cannot find every possible issue with a release.
 It's reports require interpretation.

 RAT was developed in response to a need felt in the Apache Incubator to be able to
 review releases for the most common faults less labour intensively. It is therefore
 highly tuned to the Apache style of releases.

 RAT is intended to be self documenting: reports should include introductory material
 describing their function. Building RAT describes how to run RAT. Running RAT 
 describes the options available. The release notes describe the current state of
 RAT.

Building RAT

 Building RAT requires that you have either 
 {{{http://ant.apache.org/} Apache Ant}} or
 {{{http://maven.apache.org/} Apache Maven}} installed.
 You can then use a command such as:

+------------------------------------------+
ant build
+------------------------------------------+

 or

+------------------------------------------+
mvn install
+------------------------------------------+

Running RAT

* Running from the Command Line
 
 Run from the command line with:

+------------------------------------------+
java -jar rat-VERSION.jar
+------------------------------------------+

 Where VERSION is replaced with the version number you are 
 working with.
 
 This will audit the project in the current directory.
 
* Running with Apache Ant
  
 RAT includes a task library for Ant 1.7. This allows RAT reports to be run against
 a wide variety of resources. See the file ant-task-examples.xml in
 the root directory of the project for details. 
 
 To use the Ant tasks,
 {{{http://ant.apache.org/} Apache Ant 1.7}} is required.
 
* Running with Apache Maven

 Projects using Maven are directed to the 
 {{{http://mojo.codehaus.org/rat-maven-plugin} RAT plugin}}.