| BOMTOOL(1) | General Commands Manual | BOMTOOL(1) |
NAME
bomtool — a tool
for generating SPDX-based software bills of material
SYNOPSIS
bomtool |
[options] module ... |
DESCRIPTION
bomtool is a program which generates a
textual SPDX 2.0 software bill of materials (SBOM) for a given set of
pkg-config modules. The output of this tool can then be translated into
other SBOM formats as necessary.
The options are as follows:
--about- Print the version number, the Copyright notice, and the license of the
bomtoolprogram to standard output and exit. Most other options and all command line arguments are ignored. --version- Print the version number of the
bomtoolprogram to standard output and exit. Most other options and all command line arguments are ignored. --define-variable=varname=value- Define varname as value. Variables are used in query output, and some modules' results may change based on the presence of a variable definition.
--creation-timetime- Use time as the value of the
Createdfield in the generated SBOM instead of the current time. SPDX recommends using an ISO 8601-formatted time, which is: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ. This takes precedence over theSOURCE_DATE_EPOCHenvironment variable. --outputfile- Write the generated SBOM to file instead of standard output.
ENVIRONMENT
PKG_CONFIG_DEBUG_SPEW- If set, print debugging messages to stderr.
PKG_CONFIG_IGNORE_CONFLICTS- If set, ignore
Conflictsrules in modules. Has the same effect as the--ignore-conflictsoption in pkgconf(1) PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR- A colon-separated list of low-priority directories where
pc(5) files are looked up. The
module search path is constructed by appending this list to
PKG_CONFIG_PATH, which enjoys higher priority. IfPKG_CONFIG_LIBDIRis not defined, the default list compiled into thebomtoolprogram from thePKG_DEFAULT_PATHpreprocessor macro is appended instead. IfPKG_CONFIG_LIBDIRis defined but empty, nothing is appended. PKG_CONFIG_MAXIMUM_TRAVERSE_DEPTH- Impose a limit on the allowed depth in the dependency graph.
PKG_CONFIG_PATH- A colon-separated list of high-priority directories where pc(5) files are looked up.
PKG_CONFIG_PRELOADED_FILES- Colon-separated list of pc(5) files which are loaded before any other pkg-config files. These packages are given highest priority over any other pc(5) files that would otherwise provide a given package.
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH- If set, and the
--creation-timeoption is not given, theCreatedfield in the generated SBOM is derived from this UNIX timestamp instead of the current time, allowing for reproducible SBOM generation.
EXIT STATUS
The bomtool utility exits 0 on
success, and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
Generating an SBOM for the package named foo:
$ bomtool fooSPDXVersion: SPDX-2.2DataLicense: CC0-1.0SPDXID: SPDXRef-DOCUMENTDocumentName:
SBOM-SPDX-fooC641.2.3DocumentNamespace:
https://spdx.org/spdxdocs/bomtoolCreator: Tool: bomtool[...]SEE ALSO
| June 24, 2026 | Linux 6.12.107+deb13-amd64 |