PHP Licenser

Automates the prepending of a license header doc block to your directory(ies) of source files.

Currently still in development, but will:

• Accept a directory of source files or a path to a single source file to process
• Accept a file path containing your custom license doc block
• Will not add license headers to files that have comments before the class declaration (class doc blocks are okay) unless you explicitly tell it to
• Can check your source files for the correct license information

Usage

1. Add "jameshalsall/licenser":"dev-master" to your composer.json require-dev
2. Run composer update
3. Run ./bin/licenser run /path/to/source/files /path/to/license/file to process source files

Using a built-in license type

Licenser supports the following built-in licenses:

• The Apache 2.0 license (referred to as apache-2.0 in Licenser)
• The MIT license (referred to as mit in Licenser)

To use one of these built-in licenses you just replace the path to your custom licenses file with the name of the built-in license instead. For example if you wanted to use the MIT license then you would run something like:

./bin/licenser run /path/to/files mit --owners="[email protected] [email protected]"

Value replacement in built-in licenses

When using a built-in license the Licenser will replace special placeholders with custom values. The following twig placeholder values are used:

• thisYear (always replaced with the current year)
• owner (replaced with the value you specify via the --owners option, or ignored if you don't specify a value)

Replacing an existing license

You can tell the Licenser to replace an existing license header with a new one by using the --replace-existing option when running the command. This will tell Licenser to remove any existing licenses and replace them with the new one generated.

Checking files for correct license

Licenser also allows you to check your source files for correct license information. It will warn you if there are any source files that do not have a license header that matches the options you provide.

./bin/licenser check /path/to/files mit [email protected]

Caution

It is recommended that you have your source files under version control when running the tool as it is still experimental and very much in development.

Roadmap

• Add support for replacing an existing license (thanks to @markwilson)
• Add built-in license options
• Add dry-run option to see affected files before adding headers (thanks to @unfunco)
• Add support for processing single files (thanks to @jeroensmit)
• Add support for placeholders in custom license files (such as year, owner etc.)

Bug Reporting

If you find any problems with the library then open an issue with a description of the problem and I will aim to resolve it.