Rat audits software distributions, with a special interest in headers. If this isn't quite what you're looking for then take a look at the other products developed by Apache Creadur™, including Apache Whisker™ which audits and generates legal (for example LICENSE) documents for complex software distributions.
Run from the command line with:
java -jar apache-rat/target/apache-rat-0.16.1.jar --help
This will output a help message detailing the command line options available to you.
Rat can be used to automatically add license headers to files that do not currently have them. Only files that are not excluded by the Rat configurations will be affected.
To add license headers use a command such as:
java -jar apache-rat/target/apache-rat-0.16.1.jar --addlicense --copyright "Copyright 2008 Foo" --force /path/to/project
This command will add the license header directly to the source files. If you prefer to see which files will be changed and how then remove the "--force" option.
It is common to use the Rat with the Maven or Ant plugins and specify a series of files to exclude (such as a README or version control files). If you are using the Rat application instead of a plugin you can specify a series of regex excludes in a file and specify that with the -E option.
java -jar apache-rat/target/apache-rat-0.16.1.jar -E /path/to/project/.rat-excludes -d /path/to/project
usage: java -jar apache-rat/target/apache-rat-0.16.1.jar
[options] [DIR|TARBALL]
Available options
-a,--addLicence Add the default license header to any file
with an unknown license that is not in the
exclusion list. By default new files will
be created with the license header, to
force the modification of existing files
use the --force option.
-A,--addLicense Add the default license header to any file
with an unknown license that is not in the
exclusion list. By default new files will
be created with the license header, to
force the modification of existing files
use the --force option.
-c,--copyright <arg> The copyright message to use in the
license headers, usually in the form of
"Copyright 2008 Foo"
-d,--dir Used to indicate source when using
--exclude
-e,--exclude <expression> Excludes files matching wildcard
<expression>. Note that --dir is required
when using this parameter. Allows multiple
arguments.
-E,--exclude-file <fileName> Excludes files matching regular expression
in <file> Note that --dir is required when
using this parameter.
-f,--force Forces any changes in files to be written
directly to the source files (i.e. new
files are not created)
-h,--help Print help for the RAT command line
interface and exit
--licenses <arg> File names or URLs for license definitions
--list-approved-families List all defined license families
--list-licenses List all active licenses
--no-default-licenses Ignore default configuration. By default
all approved default licenses are used
-o,--out <arg> Define the output file where to write
report (default is System.out)
-s,--stylesheet <arg> XSLT stylesheet to use when creating the
report. Not compatible with -x
--scan-hidden-directories Scan hidden directories
-x,--xml Output the report in raw XML format. Not
compatible with -s