Lockfile Generation

Lockfiles can be directly parsed and analyzed by Phylum's CLI. However, since manifest files only specify loose version requirements, it is necessary for the CLI to internally generate the corresponding lockfile.

No lockfile generation will take place if the --no-generation CLI flag is passed to phylum parse or phylum analyze.

Lockfile generators

The following table shows the supported manifest files for each lockfile type and which tools must be installed to facilitate automatic lockfile generation:

Lockfile type	Manifests	Required tool
npm	package.json	npm
yarn	package.json	yarn
pnpm	package.json	pnpm
pip	requirements*.txt requirements.in setup.py pyproject.toml	pip version 23.0.0+
pipenv	Pipfile	pipenv
poetry	pyproject.toml	poetry
gem	Gemfile	bundle (from Bundler)
mvn	pom.xml	mvn (from Maven)
gradle	build.gradle build.gradle.kts	gradle
go	go.mod	go
cargo	Cargo.toml	cargo
nugetlock	*.csproj	dotnet

TIP:

If no type is specified for files which can be handled by multiple generators, the most common tool will be used:

• package.json will use npm
• pyproject.toml will use pip

This can be overridden on the command line with the --type (-t) option. For example:

phylum analyze -t yarn package.json

Lockfile detection

The Phylum CLI prefers to work directly with lockfiles if they are available. So in a few cases, the CLI will automatically switch and use the corresponding lockfile.

First, if a user runs parse or analyze on a manifest file without specifying a lockfile type, the Phylum CLI will opportunistically switch to the lockfile if it is available in the same directory. For example, phylum analyze go.mod will automatically switch to go.sum if available. To override this, simply specify a lockfile type (i.e., phylum analyze -t go go.mod)

Second, without explicitly specifying dependency files, manifest files will only be used if there is no corresponding lockfile in the same directory or any parent directory. For example, a single Cargo.lock file at the root of the repository will be used instead of looking at any Cargo.toml files anywhere in the repository. To avoid this, run phylum init and specify all files that you want analyzed.

Lockifests

Special handling is given to manifests that, for historical reasons, can also be used as lockfiles. Specifically, Python's requirements.txt is a manifest file. But in some scenarios it may be fully specified and effectively becomes a lockfile (e.g., pip freeze > requirements.txt).

Phylum handles these files by first attempting to analyze them as a lockfile. If anything in the file is not fully specified, this will fail, and Phylum will silence the error and proceed to lockfile generation.

Sandboxing

It is necessary for Phylum's CLI to sandbox lockfile generation, since some ecosystems can execute arbitrary code when generating a lockfile with malicious dependencies. This sandbox only has limited filesystem access, based on what ecosystem tools commonly need to generate lockfiles.

While this sandbox should work on most systems, there are some scenarios in which it can cause lockfile generation to fail. One common example is the presence of another sandbox like Docker, which prevents Phylum's CLI from setting up its own sandbox.

If you're already running a sandbox designed to combat malicious code, you can disable the lockfile generation sandbox using --skip-sandbox. This is NOT SAFE without a sandbox in place and will harm the system when run on a compromised project.

Example scenario

1. A user runs phylum analyze package.json

2. The CLI checks for the existence of a matching lockfile (i.e., package-lock.json, npm-shrinkwrap.json, or yarn.lock)

3. If a matching lockfile is found, that file will be used instead

4. If no matching lockfile is found, proceed to manifest file generation

5. Since no --type was specified, the fallback will be used (in this case, npm)

6. The lockfile generator runs this command to generate a lockfile:

   npm install --package-lock-only --ignore-scripts

7. The output lockfile (package-lock.json) is analyzed