Tool for adding license headers to source files?

#!/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

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()

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  

Edit: If you're using eclipse, there's a plugin

I wrote a simple python script based on Silver Dragon's reply. I needed a more flexible solution so I came up with this. It allows you to add a headerfile to all files in a directory, recursively. You can optionally add a regex which the filenames should match, and a regex wich the directory names should match and a regex which the first line in the file shouldn't match. You can use this last argument to check if the header is already included.

This script will automatically skip the first line in a file if this starts with a shebang (#!). This to not break other scripts that rely on this. If you do not wish this behaviour you'll have to comment out 3 lines in writeheader.

here it is:

#!/usr/bin/python
"""
This script attempts to add a header to each file in the given directory 
The header will be put the line after a Shebang (#!) if present.
If a line starting with a regular expression 'skip' is present as first line or after the shebang it will ignore that file.
If filename is given only files matchign the filename regex will be considered for adding the license to,
by default this is '*'

usage: python addheader.py headerfile directory [filenameregex [dirregex [skip regex]]]

easy example: add header to all files in this directory:
python addheader.py licenseheader.txt . 

harder example adding someone as copyrightholder to all python files in a source directory,exept directories named 'includes' where he isn't added yet:
python addheader.py licenseheader.txt src/ ".*\.py" "^((?!includes).)*$" "#Copyright .* Jens Timmerman*" 
where licenseheader.txt contains '#Copyright 2012 Jens Timmerman'
"""
import os
import re
import sys

def writeheader(filename,header,skip=None):
    """
    write a header to filename, 
    skip files where first line after optional shebang matches the skip regex
    filename should be the name of the file to write to
    header should be a list of strings
    skip should be a regex
    """
    f = open(filename,"r")
    inpt =f.readlines()
    f.close()
    output = []

    #comment out the next 3 lines if you don't wish to preserve shebangs
    if len(inpt) > 0 and inpt[0].startswith("#!"): 
        output.append(inpt[0])
        inpt = inpt[1:]

    if skip and skip.match(inpt[0]): #skip matches, so skip this file
        return

    output.extend(header) #add the header
    for line in inpt:
        output.append(line)
    try:
        f = open(filename,'w')
        f.writelines(output)
        f.close()
        print "added header to %s" %filename
    except IOError,err:
        print "something went wrong trying to add header to %s: %s" % (filename,err)


def addheader(directory,header,skipreg,filenamereg,dirregex):
    """
    recursively adds a header to all files in a dir
    arguments: see module docstring
    """
    listing = os.listdir(directory)
    print "listing: %s " %listing
    #for each file/dir in this dir
    for i in listing:
        #get the full name, this way subsubdirs with the same name don't get ignored
        fullfn = os.path.join(directory,i) 
        if os.path.isdir(fullfn): #if dir, recursively go in
            if (dirregex.match(fullfn)):
                print "going into %s" % fullfn
                addheader(fullfn, header,skipreg,filenamereg,dirregex)
        else:
            if (filenamereg.match(fullfn)): #if file matches file regex, write the header
                writeheader(fullfn, header,skipreg)


def main(arguments=sys.argv):
    """
    main function: parses arguments and calls addheader
    """
    ##argument parsing
    if len(arguments) > 6 or len(arguments) < 3:
        sys.stderr.write("Usage: %s headerfile directory [filenameregex [dirregex [skip regex]]]\n" \
                         "Hint: '.*' is a catch all regex\nHint:'^((?!regexp).)*$' negates a regex\n"%sys.argv[0])
        sys.exit(1)

    skipreg = None
    fileregex = ".*"
    dirregex = ".*"
    if len(arguments) > 5:
        skipreg = re.compile(arguments[5])
    if len(arguments) > 3:
        fileregex =  arguments[3]
    if len(arguments) > 4:
        dirregex =  arguments[4]
    #compile regex    
    fileregex = re.compile(fileregex)
    dirregex = re.compile(dirregex)
    #read in the headerfile just once
    headerfile = open(arguments[1])
    header = headerfile.readlines()
    headerfile.close()
    addheader(arguments[2],header,skipreg,fileregex,dirregex)

#call the main method
main()

For Java you can use Maven's License plugin: http://code.google.com/p/maven-license-plugin/

Here's one I found on the Apache list. Its written in Ruby and seems easy enough to read. You should even be able to call it from rake for extra special niceness. :)

If you still need one, there is a little tool I have written, named SrcHead. You can find it at http://www.solvasoft.nl/downloads.html