Can't link License button to alternate file if LICENSE file exists (R package development)

Summary

R Packages use the file LICENSE for other things than the text of the license, and GitLab doesn't provide a way to link the License button on the project page to a different file if LICENSE exists in the top directory of a project.

Details

The coding standards for the R Project and CRAN are very clear that the file LICENSE in the top-level directory of the package must not contain the text of the license for the package. For instance, if my package is licensed under the MIT license, then the file DESCRIPTION contains the line License: MIT + file LICENSE and the file LICENSE contains only the two lines:

YEAR: <year>
COPYRIGHT HOLDER: <name>

I can have a file called LICENSE.txt or LICENSE.md that has the full text of the license.

However, if a project has a file called LICENSE in the top directory, GitLab automatically links the License button on main project page to LICENSE. There does not seem to be any way to override this behavior and tell GitLab to link the License button to another file instead, such as LICENSE.md or LICENSE.txt.

R package developers need to be able to get GitLab to link another file (such as LICENSE.md or LICENSE.txt) to the License button on the main project page when there is a LICENSE file in the same directory.

Possible Fixes

In the function license in app/models/repository.rb allow the user to override the variable preferences (either globally or on a per-project basis).