Introduction

This is a tool that makes sure every matching file has a license-stub at the top, and works like a reasonable developer would expect it to.

Features

• Only change files that don't already have the stub (idempotency).
• The license template can have replaceable tokens (e.g. "YEAR" is defined by default).
• The license can be inserted after the last occurence of a line containing a configurable list of strings (e.g. #!/bin/sh, <?php).
• The modified files are printed to stdout. These can be used to feed your VC (git, svn, etc..) and autocommit the changes.
• Changed files can be filtered by extension.
• Recursion can be turned off.
• Files and directories can be ignored by name (e.g. '  init  .py', '.svn').
• By default, it operates on the current directory.
• There is a full test-suite.

Installation

sudo pip install plicense

Usage

This is the minimum command-line:

plicense <license file-path>

This will recursively process every file in the current directory.

Because your projects will often include files that will be excluded (like init.py for Python projects, or .git/.svn/etc.. for version-control), or extensionless files that will be included, you will often need to do at least a couple of passes.

For example, in order for me to install the license stubs in my beantool project, I needed to execute the following steps. You can use the table below as a reference for the command-line options.

1. Process my scripts/ directory. The files in this directory don't have extensions. However, I can't run plicense over the whole tree, or I'll be including virtualenv and git files, which should be ignored. I could introduce additional options, but this will be simpler.

   beantool$ plicense -p scripts -r author "Dustin Oprea" LICENSE_STUB 
   scripts/bt
   (1)/(1) directories scanned.
   (1)/(1) files scanned.
   (1)/(1) of the found files needed the stub.
   

   The top portion of the script now looks like:

   #!/usr/bin/env python2.7
   
   # beantool: Beanstalk console client.
   # Copyright (C) 2014  Dustin Oprea
   # 
   # This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
   # modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
   # as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
   # of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
   
   
   import sys
   sys.path.insert(0, '..')
   
   import argparse

2. Process the Python files in the rest of the tree.

   beantool$ plicense -p beantool -e py -r author "Dustin Oprea" -f __init__.py LICENSE_STUB 
   beantool/job_terminal.py
   beantool/handlers/handler_base.py
   beantool/handlers/job.py
   beantool/handlers/server.py
   beantool/handlers/tube.py
   (2)/(2) directories scanned.
   (5)/(7) files scanned.
   (5)/(5) of the found files needed the stub.
   

   If you run it again, you'll see that nothing is done:

   beantool$ plicense -p beantool -e py -r author "Dustin Oprea" -f __init__.py LICENSE_STUB 
   (2)/(2) directories scanned.
   (5)/(7) files scanned.
   (0)/(5) of the found files needed the stub.
   

Interesting Command-Line Options

A complete description of the command-line arguments can be found by using "-h".