Supported Languages and Lockfiles

Table of contents

Supported Languages and Lockfiles

Supported lockfiles

A wide range of lockfiles are supported by utilizing this lockfile package.

Language	Compatible Lockfile(s)
C/C++	`conan.lock` C/C++ commit scanning
Dart	`pubspec.lock`
Elixir	`mix.lock`
Go	`go.mod`
Java	`buildscript-gradle.lockfile` `gradle.lockfile` `gradle/verification-metadata.xml` `pom.xml`*
Javascript	`package-lock.json` `pnpm-lock.yaml` `yarn.lock`
PHP	`composer.lock`
Python	`Pipfile.lock` `poetry.lock` `requirements.txt`* `pdm.lock`
R	`renv.lock`
Ruby	`Gemfile.lock`
Rust	`Cargo.lock`

Alpine Package Keeper and Debian Package Manager

The scanner also supports:

installed files used by the Alpine Package Keeper (apk) that typically live at /lib/apk/db/installed
status files used by the Debian Package manager (dpkg) that typically live at /var/lib/dpkg/status

however you must specify them explicitly using the --lockfile flag:

osv-scanner --lockfile 'apk-installed:/lib/apk/db/installed'
osv-scanner --lockfile 'dpkg-status:/var/lib/dpkg/status'

C/C++ scanning

With the addition of vulnerable commit ranges to the OSV.dev database, OSV-Scanner now supports vendored and submoduled C/C++ dependencies

Because the C/C++ ecosystem does not have a centralized package manager, C/C++ dependencies tend to be bundled with the project. Dependencies are either submoduled or vendored. In either case, OSV-Scanner is able to find known vulnerabilities in your project dependencies.

OSV-Scanner’s C/C++ support is based on commit-level data. OSV’s commit-level data covers the majority of C/C++ vulnerabilities within the OSV database, but users should be aware that there may be vulnerabilities in their dependencies that could be excluded from OSV-Scanner results. Adding more commit-level data to the database is an ongoing project.

Submoduled dependencies

Submoduled dependencies are included in the project folder retain their Git histories. To scan a C/C++ project with submoduled dependencies:

Navigate to the root folder of your project.
Ensure that your submodules are up to date using git submodule update.
Run scanner using osv-scanner -r ..

Vendored dependencies

Vendored dependencies have been directly copied into the project folder, but do not retain their Git histories. OSV-Scanner uses OSV’s determineversion API to estimate each dependency’s version (and associated Git Commit). Vulnerabilities for the estimated version are returned. This process requires no additional work from the user. Run OSV-Scanner as you normally would.

Transitive dependency scanning

OSV-Scanner supports transitive dependency scanning for Maven pom.xml. This feature is enabled by default when scanning, but it can be disabled using the --experimental-no-resolve flag. It is also disabled in the offline mode.

OSV-Scanner uses deps.dev’s resolver library to compute the dependency graph of a project. This graph includes all of the direct and transitive dependencies. By default, deps.dev API is queried for package versions and requirements. The support for private registries is coming soon.

After the dependency resolution, the OSV database is queried for the vulnerabilities associated with these dependencies as usual.

Test dependencies are not supported yet in the computed dependency graph for Maven pom.xml.

Data source

By default, we use the deps.dev API to find version and dependency information of packages during transitive scanning.

If instead you’d like to fetch data from Maven Central, you can use the --experimental-resolution-data-source=native flag.

If your project uses mirrored or private registries, in addition to setting --experimental-resolution-data-source=native, you will need to use the --experimental-maven-registry=<full-registry-url> flag to specify the registry (e.g. --experimental-maven-registry=https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/).

Custom Lockfiles

If you have a custom lockfile that we do not support or prefer to do your own custom parsing, you can extract the custom lockfile information and create a custom intermediate file containing dependency information so that osv-scanner can still check for vulnerabilities.

Once you extracted your own dependency information, place it in a osv-scanner.json file, with the same format as the JSON output of osv-scanner, e.g.:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "packages": [
        {
          "package": {
            "name": "github.com/repo/url",
            "commit": "9a6bd55c9d0722cb101fe85a3b22d89e4ff4fe52"
          }
        },
        {
          "package": {
            "name": "react",
            "version": "1.2.3",
            "ecosystem": "npm"
          }
        },
        // ...
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Then pass this to osv-scanner with this:

osv-scanner --lockfile osv-scanner:/path/to/osv-scanner.json