Tool for adding license headers to source files?

Python 2 solution, modify for your own need

Features:

  • handles UTF headers (important for most IDEs)
  • recursively updates all files in target directory passing given mask (modify the .endswith parameter for the filemask of your language (.c, .java, ..etc)
  • ability to overwrite previous copyright text (provide old copyright parameter to do this)
  • optionally omits directories given in the excludedir array
# updates the copyright information for all .cs files
# usage: call recursive_traversal, with the following parameters
# parent directory, old copyright text content, new copyright text content

import os

excludedir = ["..\\Lib"]

def update_source(filename, oldcopyright, copyright):
    utfstr = chr(0xef)+chr(0xbb)+chr(0xbf)
    fdata = file(filename,"r+").read()
    isUTF = False
    if (fdata.startswith(utfstr)):
        isUTF = True
        fdata = fdata[3:]
    if (oldcopyright != None):
        if (fdata.startswith(oldcopyright)):
            fdata = fdata[len(oldcopyright):]
    if not (fdata.startswith(copyright)):
        print "updating "+filename
        fdata = copyright + fdata
        if (isUTF):
            file(filename,"w").write(utfstr+fdata)
        else:
            file(filename,"w").write(fdata)

def recursive_traversal(dir,  oldcopyright, copyright):
    global excludedir
    fns = os.listdir(dir)
    print "listing "+dir
    for fn in fns:
        fullfn = os.path.join(dir,fn)
        if (fullfn in excludedir):
            continue
        if (os.path.isdir(fullfn)):
            recursive_traversal(fullfn, oldcopyright, copyright)
        else:
            if (fullfn.endswith(".cs")):
                update_source(fullfn, oldcopyright, copyright)
    
     
oldcright = file("oldcr.txt","r+").read()
cright = file("copyrightText.txt","r+").read()
recursive_traversal("..", oldcright, cright)
exit()

Check out the copyright-header RubyGem. It supports files with extensions ending in php, c, h, cpp, hpp, hh, rb, css, js, html. It can also add and remove headers.

Install it by typing "sudo gem install copyright-header"

After that, can do something like:

copyright-header --license GPL3 \
  --add-path lib/ \
  --copyright-holder 'Dude1 <[email protected]>' \
  --copyright-holder 'Dude2 <[email protected]>' \
  --copyright-software 'Super Duper' \
  --copyright-software-description "A program that makes life easier" \
  --copyright-year 2012 \
  --copyright-year 2012 \
  --word-wrap 80 --output-dir ./

It also supports custom license files using the --license-file argument.


#!/bin/bash

for i in *.cc # or whatever other pattern...
do
  if ! grep -q Copyright $i
  then
    cat copyright.txt $i >$i.new && mv $i.new $i
  fi
done

Here's a Bash script that'll do the trick, assuming you have the license header in the file license.txt:

File addlicense.sh:

#!/bin/bash  
for x in $*; do  
head -$LICENSELEN $x | diff license.txt - || ( ( cat license.txt; echo; cat $x) > /tmp/file;  
mv /tmp/file $x )  
done  

Now run this in your source directory:

export LICENSELEN=`wc -l license.txt | cut -f1 -d ' '`  
find . -type f \(-name \*.cpp -o -name \*.h \) -print0 | xargs -0 ./addlicense.sh