# Add Copyright or License text to the Source Files Recursively # Introduction Recently I was assigned to the task of adding a `Copyright text block` to all the JavaScript Source Code files. Initially, the task was assumed to be an easy one as I thought of using any related VSCode Extensions to achieve it. However it was proved to be hectic when I found, I have to do it for 250 odd files 😲! What next? Of course, the natural instinct was to, [search on the web](https://www.google.com/search?q=add+copyright+notice+to+source+files&rlz=1C1GCEU_enIN820IN820&oq=adding+copyright+text+to+source+&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0j69i60l3j69i64l2.19743j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) for a tool that does it. I just did that. I found many responses, especially a few great directions from [StackOverFlow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/151677/tool-for-adding-license-headers-to-source-files). So, I thought it would be better to put the working solution in a public GitHub repo so that, others can use it using a good documentation. # Requirements - Ability to add a block of text(Copyright, License, Any Generic Comment, etc) to the top of the Source Code(or any target files). - Ability to read the block of text from a file and add it to the Source Code. - Do not update the Source Code file with the Copyright/License content if it is present already. - Add the Copyright content to the files recursively. - Ability to ignore certain folders while adding the content to the Source Files. This was important because I didn't want to add my organization's Copyright note into the Source Code of any external libraries like reactJs. # Meet the Tool The tool `add-copyright` is able to meet all the requirements mentioned above with a few limitations that we will see at the end. You can clone the repo and use it from here: %[https://github.com/atapas/add-copyright] # Usage The main files of the tool are followings, - `copyright.txt`: An input file where you keep the text block(Copyright/License text) to apply on your Source Code. - `addcopyright.sh`: The Script file which is responsible for adding the text block to the target Source Code. ## Command to Run ```bash find -type d -name "" -prune -o -name "*.js" -print0 | xargs -0 ./addcopyright.sh ``` Where the <*SOURCE_CODE_DIRECTIRY*> is the path of your source code. Where the <*EXCLUDE_DIRECTORY*> is the directory to exclude if it exists under for updating the Copyright information. For example, running the tool on the JsvaScript Source Code under the folder `/opt/atapas/code` by excluding the folder `node_modules`, use this command, ```bash find /opt/atapas/code -type d -name "node_modules" -prune -o -name "*.js" -print0 | xargs -0 ./addcopyright.sh ``` You can ignore multiple folders in a single command and can use them on different types of Source Code files. [Please go through the Readme documentation](https://github.com/atapas/add-copyright/blob/master/README.md) for more details. ## Output Here is the output of running the command, ![output.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1587113197356/y23Knfi1u.png) # Limitations Few Limitations included: - This tool can only be run from a Linux Bash Shell. For running it from windows use any bash shell-like [GitBash](https://git-scm.com/download/win). - This tool can be made use for different language files like javascript, java, c, c++, HTML, shell-script etc. However the content of the `copyright.txt` should be changed according to the multi-line comment format. For example, - For Javascript(.js) or Java(.java) files this is the format: ```js /* This is a comment */ ``` - For HTML(.htm or .html) file the format should be, ```html ``` # Last few words... I hope the tool will be useful to many of you as it was to me. Please like/share(👍) this post and give a star(⭐) to [my project in GitHub](https://github.com/atapas/add-copyright). If you are willing to contribute to it in any form, you are most welcome! There could be various other ways(maybe a better one too) to achieve the same goal. Please feel free to share in the comment section.