Build/Release: Upgrade to RAT 0.17

[kevinjqliu]

Upgrades RAT to version 0.17, which has new regex for exclusion expression that would allow us to exclude subdir and unblock #15144

• Using --input-exclude-file because -E,--exclude-file is deprecated
• Using --input-include-std HIDDEN_DIR because --scan-hidden-directories is deprecated
• Using the new --output-style missing-headers option for output styling

Heres the new --help message, https://gist.github.com/kevinjqliu/81ebca6bf93dd941c3156dda8bd57c56

Example output

Success

https://github.com/apache/iceberg/actions/runs/21370993207/job/61515189315?pr=15145

Run dev/check-license
Attempting to fetch rat
INFO: Apache Creadur RAT 0.17 (Apache Software Foundation)
SLF4J(W): No SLF4J providers were found.
SLF4J(W): Defaulting to no-operation (NOP) logger implementation
SLF4J(W): See https://www.slf4j.org/codes.html#noProviders for further details.
Files with missing headers:
RAT checks passed.

Failure

https://github.com/apache/iceberg/actions/runs/21371129112/job/61515658994?pr=15145

Run dev/check-license
Attempting to fetch rat
INFO: Apache Creadur RAT 0.17 (Apache Software Foundation)
SLF4J(W): No SLF4J providers were found.
SLF4J(W): Defaulting to no-operation (NOP) logger implementation
SLF4J(W): See https://www.slf4j.org/codes.html#noProviders for further details.
Files with missing headers:
  /tmp
ERROR: Unexpected count for UNAPPROVED, limit is [0,0].  Count: 1
Exception in thread "main" org.apache.rat.document.RatDocumentAnalysisException: Issues with UNAPPROVED
	at org.apache.rat.Report.main(Report.java:53)
Error: Process completed with exit code 1.

Previous upgrade #9579

[kevinjqliu]

about the new regex syntax.
**/build/**, matches any folder name "build"
.git/**, matches top level dir name .git and excludes all its files
dev/.rat-excludes, matches this 1 file explicitly
**/LICENSE, matches any file name "LICENSE"
**/*.sql, matches any file with .sql suffix

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR upgrades the Apache RAT license-checking tool to version 0.17 and updates how license checks are invoked and configured, aiming to support newer exclusion capabilities (e.g., for subdirectories) and the missing-headers output style.

Changes:

• Bump RAT from 0.16.1 to 0.17 and simplify dev/check-license to rely on RAT’s exit code and the --output-style missing-headers option instead of parsing text output.
• Switch from the old -E flag to --input-exclude-file in the license check script and adjust logging behavior.
• Rewrite dev/.rat-excludes patterns, attempting to use **-style patterns for directories and extensions (e.g., **/build/**, **/*.json).

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
dev/check-license	Updates RAT version to 0.17 and modernizes the invocation including exclusion file flag, output style, and logging, with direct use of the tool’s exit status.
dev/.rat-excludes	Replaces previous regex-like exclusion entries with **-style path and extension patterns to control which files and directories RAT scans.

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[huaxingao]

why we are not scanning hidden directories any more?

[kevinjqliu]

good catch, we should!