Ligen

Ligen is a small tool that injects LICENSE headers into source files.
It was mainly built for C and C++ projects, but it should work with other languages too (not guaranteed).

What it does

It takes a license header from a file and adds it to the top of source files in a directory.
You can choose which directories to allow or ignore, and set how wide the spacing is between the * characters in the comment block.

Usage

ligen --license ./header.txt --allow ./src --ignore ./src/thirdparty --width 1

Flags

• --license
  path to the LICENSE header you want to use (text file) (REQUIRED)

• --allow
  directory where files should be modified (it scans files recursively) (REQUIRED)

• --ignore
  directory to skip while scanning (can be used multiple times) (OPTIONAL)

• --width
  spacing between the * in the comment block (optional) (OPTIONAL) (DEFAULT = 1)

Example

If you have a header.txt like:

This is my license.
Do not copy.

And you run:

ligen --license ./header.txt --allow ./project --ignore ./project/vendor --width 60

Then every C/C++ file in ./project (except in ./project/vendor) will get a comment block at the top that looks something like:

/**
 * This is my license.                                       
 * Do not copy.                                              
 */

Notes

• Only tested with .c, .cpp, .h, .hpp files
• Doesn’t modify files that already have a comment at the start or an existing header
• Won’t touch files in ignored directories
• Doesn’t format or parse code, it just prepends text

Why

I needed something small to add headers to C/C++ codebases without messing around with big tools or scripts.
This does the job with a single command.

License

GNU GPLv3