License Gradle Plugin

This plugin will scan and adapt your source files to include a provided header, e.g. a LICENSE file. By default it will scan every source set and report warnings. It will also create format tasks, which will properly format and apply the specified header. A bulk of the logic comes from the maven-license-plugin.

This plugin will also report on the licenses of your dependencies.

Usage

From v0.11.0 onwards the license-gradle-plugin will be published to http://bintray.com and will be available through the Gradle plugin exchange. This means that there are a few different usage scenarios listed below.

Gradle 2.1 and above

In your build.gradle file add:

plugins {
    id "com.github.hierynomus.license" version "0.13.1"
}

Gradle 1.x/2.0, latest license-gradle-plugin

In your build.gradle file add:

buildscript {
  repositories {
    maven {
      url "https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/"
    }
  }
  dependencies {
    classpath "gradle.plugin.nl.javadude.gradle.plugins:license-gradle-plugin:0.13.1"
  }
}

apply plugin: "com.github.hierynomus.license"

Gradle 1.x/2.0, gradle-license-plugin 0.10.0 (and earlier)

In your build.gradle file add:

    buildscript {
        repositories {
            mavenCentral()
        }

        dependencies {
            classpath 'nl.javadude.gradle.plugins:license-gradle-plugin:0.10.0'
        }
    }

    apply plugin: 'license'

This will add two types of tasks for each source set (created by BasePlugin) in your project: one for checking for consistency and one to apply the header, e.g.

licenseMain : checks for header consistency in the main source set
licenseFormatMain : applies the license found in the header file in files missing the header
licenseTest : checks for header consistency in the test source set

The check tasks are added to the standard Gradle check task.

This will also add a task to manage the downloading and reporting of licenses of your dependencies.

downloadLicenses : generates reports on your runtime dependencies

License Task

The license task has a properties, most can be set in the extension:

header	Specify location of header to use in comparisons, default to project.file('LICENSE')
headerURI	Specify location of header as a URI, see section below on Header Locations for examples
ignoreFailures	Prevent tasks from stopping the build, defaults to false
dryRun	Show what would happen if the task was run, defaults to false but also inherits from `--dryRun`
skipExistingHeaders	Skip over files that have some header already, which might not be the one specified in the header parameter, defaults to false
useDefaultMappings	Use a long list of standard mapping, defaults to true. See http://code.mycila.com/license-maven-plugin/#supported-comment-types for the complete list
strictCheck	Be extra strict in the formatting of existing headers, defaults to false
sourceSets	List of sourceSets to create tasks for, will default to all sourceSets created by Java Plugin
mapping(String ext, String style)	Adds a mapping between a file extension and a style type
mapping(Map<String,String> mappings)	Adds mappings between file extensions and style types
mapping(Closure)	Adds mappings between file extensions and a style types, see example below

License Extension

A license extension is added to the project, which can be used to configure all license tasks. E.g.

license {
    header rootProject.file('codequality/HEADER')
    strictCheck true
}

Here is a general overview of the options:

header	Specify location of header to use in comparisons, default to `project.file('LICENSE')`
headerURI	Specify location of header as a URI.
ignoreFailures	Prevent tasks from stopping the build, defaults to false
dryRun	Show what would happen if the task was run, defaults to false but also inherits from `--dryRun`
skipExistingHeaders	Skip over files that have some header already, which might not be the one specified in the header parameter, defaults to false
useDefaultMappings	Use a long list of standard mapping, defaults to true. See http://code.mycila.com/license-maven-plugin/#supported-comment-types for the complete list
strictCheck	Be extra strict in the formatting of existing headers, defaults to false
sourceSets	List of sourceSets to create tasks for, will default to all sourceSets created by Java Plugin
mapping(String ext, String style)	Adds a mapping between a file extension and a style type
mapping(Map<String,String> mappings)	Adds mappings between file extensions and style types
mapping(Closure)	Adds mappings between file extensions and a style types, see example below
exclude(String pattern)	Add an ANT style pattern to exclude files from license absence reporting and license application
excludes(Collection<String> patterns)	Add ANT style patterns to exclude files from license absence reporting and license application
include(String pattern)	Add an ANT style pattern to include files into license absence reporting and license application
includes(Collection<String> patterns)	Add ANT style patterns to include files into license absence reporting and license application

Header Locations

The plugin can load a reference license file from the local file system with the header property.

    license { header = file('LGPL.txt') }

To load a license from a URI directly it can be headerURI property.

    license { headerURI = new URI("https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.txt") }

The problem with that approach is that we’re requiring a network call to run the task. Another option is to load the license from the classpath. This is most commonly seen from a plugin which is configuring this plugin. First you’d bundle a LICENSE.TXT file into the src/main/resources/META-INF directory. Then you’d configure this plugin like the below code.

    license { headerURI = myPlugin.class.getResource("/META-INF/LICENSE.TXT").toURI() }

In regards to the header, tasks can be configured individually or in bulk also,

    licenseFormatMain.header = file('APL.txt')
    // or
    tasks.withType(License) { header = file('LGPL.txt') }

File Types

Supported by default: java, groovy, js, css, xml, dtd, xsd, html, htm, xsl, fml, apt, properties, sh, txt, bat, cmd, sql, jsp, ftl, xhtml, vm, jspx, gsp, json. Complete list can be found in the parent project at http://code.mycila.com/license-maven-plugin/#supported-comment-types.

Recognizing other file types.

An extensive list of formats and mappings are available by default, see the SupportedFormats link above. Occasionally a project might need to add a mapping to a unknown file type to an existing comment style.

license {
    mapping {
        javascript='JAVADOC_STYLE'
    }
}
// or
license.mapping 'javascript' 'JAVADOC_STYLE'
// or
license.mapping('javascript', 'JAVADOC_STYLE')
// or directly on the task
licenseMain.mapping 'javascript' 'JAVADOC_STYLE'

Defining new comment types is not currently supported, but file a bug and it can be added.

Variable substitution

Variables in the format ${} format will be substituted, as long as their values are provided in the extension or the task.

    Copyright (C) ${year} ${name} <${email}>

Will be completed with this extension block, the key is adding them via extra properties:

license {
    ext.year = Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.YEAR)
    ext.name = 'Company'
    ext.email = 'support@company.com'
}
// or
licenseMain.ext.year = 2012

Include/Exclude files from license absence reporting and license application

By default all files in the sourceSets configured are required to carry a license. Just like with Gradle SourceSet you can use include/exclude patterns to control this behaviour.

The semantics are:

no includes or excludes: All files in the sourceSets will be included
excludes provided: All files except those matching the exclude patterns are included
includes provided: Only the files matching the include patterns are included
both includes and excludes provided: All files matching the include patterns, except those matching the exclude patterns are included.

For instance:

license {
    exclude "**/*.properties"
    excludes(["**/*.txt", "**/*.conf"])
}

This will exclude all .properties, .txt and *.conf files.

license {
    include "**/*.groovy"
    includes(["**/*.java", "**/*.properties"])
}

This will include only all .groovy, .java and *.properties files.

license {
    include "**/*.java"
    exclude "**/*Test.java"
}

This will include all *.java files, except the *Test.java files.

Running on a non-java project

By default, applying the plugin will generate license tasks for all source sets defined by the java plugin. You can also run the license task on an arbitrary file tree, if you don’t have the java plugin, or your files are outside a java source tree.

task licenseFormatSql (type:nl.javadude.gradle.plugins.license.License) {
    source = fileTree(dir: "source").include("**/*.sql")
}
licenseFormat.dependsOn licenseFormatSql

License Reporting

The downloadLicense task has a set of properties, most can be set in the extension:

includeProjectDependencies	true if you want to include the transitive dependencies of your project dependencies
ignoreFatalParseErrors	true if you want to ignore fatal errors when parsing POMs of transitive dependencies
licenses	a pre-defined mapping of a dependency to a license; useful if the external repositories do not have license information available
aliases	a mapping between licenses; useful to consolidate the various POM definitions of different spelled/named licenses
excludeDependencies	a List of dependencies that are to be excluded from reporting
dependencyConfiguration	Gradle dependency configuration to report on (defaults to "runtime").

A 'license()' method is made available by the License Extension that takes two Strings, the first is the license name, the second is the URL to the license.

downloadLicenses {
    ext.apacheTwo = license('Apache License, Version 2.0', 'http://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0')
    ext.bsd = license('BSD License', 'http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php')

    includeProjectDependencies = true
    licenses = [
        (group('com.myproject.foo')) : license('My Company License'),
        'org.apache.james:apache-mime4j:0.6' : apacheTwo,
        'org.some-bsd:project:1.0' : bsd
    ]

    aliases = [
        (apacheTwo) : ['The Apache Software License, Version 2.0', 'Apache 2', 'Apache License Version 2.0', 'Apache License, Version 2.0', 'Apache License 2.0', license('Apache License', 'http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0')],
        (bsd) : ['BSD', license('New BSD License', 'http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php')]
    ]

    excludeDependencies = [
        'com.some-other-project.bar:foobar:1.0'
    ]

    dependencyConfiguration = 'compile'
}

Changelog

v0.13.1 (2016-06-07)

Merged #109: Fixed compatibility with older Android plugins === v0.13.0 (2016-06-06)
Upgraded Gradle build version to 2.13
Upgraded Android Tools version to 2.0+
Merged #106: Added boolean parameter to ignore broken poms while searching for licenses

v0.12.1 (2015-10-26)

Merged #87: Fix downloadLicenses fails with module notation '::' is invalid

v0.12.0 (2015-10-07)

Merged #56: Added Android support
Merged #72: Fix SAX parser to ignore namespaces
Merged #82: Also now works for Android LibraryPlugin
Merged #83: Fix for Android plugin detection
Merged #84: Support for unified license reports in multi-module builds (Fixes #40 and #50)
Fixed #48: Added '.gradle' as standard extension
Fixed #70: Added '.yaml' and '.yml' as standard extension
Fixed #85: Removed source dependency on (optional) Android plugin.