* Many case differentiations in the agent code were replaced by
method calls in the newly introduced LanguageBackend abstraction
* The registry allows new backends to be added dynamically
(via Python packages that implement a specific entrypoint)
The repository is licensed per component. SolidLSP (src/solidlsp,
test/solidlsp, test/resources) remains MIT-licensed and independently
reusable; the Serena application (src/serena, src/interprompt, scripts,
test/serena, docs) is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later starting with the v2
licensing transition. The change is not retroactive: all releases and
commits up to v1.7.0 / 74c38a65 (tag mit-final) remain available under MIT.
Since MIT is GPL-compatible, a distribution combining both (such as the
serena-agent package) is as a whole subject to GPL-3.0-or-later, while the
SolidLSP files themselves stay MIT and can be extracted and used separately
under MIT terms. The distribution metadata therefore declares
GPL-3.0-or-later, with both license texts shipped alongside it.
Serena originally began under the GPL (v2) and was switched to MIT in
May 2025 following community requests. We consider that change a mistake;
the substantial changes in v2 make this the appropriate time to revert it.
We want the best version of Serena to remain free.
Changes:
* LICENSE is now the licensing overview; canonical license texts live in
LICENSES/ (MIT.txt is the previous LICENSE verbatim, GPL-3.0-or-later.txt
is the unmodified FSF text)
* pyproject.toml declares the PEP 639 license expression
"GPL-3.0-or-later" and bundles LICENSE and LICENSES/* as license files;
the deprecated MIT classifier is dropped and flake.nix declares gpl3Plus;
README has per-component license badges and a License section
* SPDX-License-Identifier headers in all Python sources under src/ and
scripts/, added by the new idempotent scripts/add_spdx_headers.py, which
gen_prompt_factory.py also uses to keep the header on the generated
module; existing third-party notices are preserved
* CLA.md: Contributor License Agreement (contributor retains copyright;
grants a perpetual, irrevocable license including relicensing under any
terms, incl. proprietary/commercial; patent grant; authority
representations), to be enforced repository-wide via cla-assistant.io
* CONTRIBUTING.md, PR template and a new docs page explain the licensing
boundary and the CLA workflow
Subprocesses were not cleaned up, in particular.
* Rename SerenaAgent.shutdown to on_shutdown, because it is really a shutdown handler;
it did not perform a shutdown.
* Add new method shutdown which is now called from both sites (and which performs
the full shutdown)
* Manage the process instance used for the dashboard viewer and shut it down
explicitly.
* Initialise all variables used during shutdown immeditaly (avoiding errors when
shutdown is triggered during init)
* Improved symbol retrieval tool responses
1. FindSymbol (LS and JB) now has max_matches. Both tools now perform grouping like other symbol retrieval tools
2. When a result exceeds max_answer_chars, the caller may pass a shortened message. This is used in references and overview tools
* Progressive shortening for tool results that exceed max_answer_chars
Change _limit_length to accept an optional list of closures instead of
a single shortened_result string. Each closure produces a progressively
shorter version of the result, tried in order until one fits. The last
closure is assumed to always fit and is used unconditionally.
* Extended grouper
More flexible grouping logic was needed to achieve the above results. Grouper also no longer
mutates the input (using deepcopy)
---------
Co-authored-by: Dominik Jain <dominik.jain@oraios-ai.de>
Dominik Jain