Scroll to navigation

COPYRIGHT-UPDATE(1) User commands COPYRIGHT-UPDATE(1)

NAME

copyright-update - Update Copyright information in files

USAGE

  copyright-update [options] FILE [FILE ...]
  copyright-update [options] --recursive PATH [PATH ...]

DESCRIPTION

Update the copyright information in a set of files, possibly recursively, matching content criteria. The update affects the copyright year, GPL address information, etc.

The line must contain the word "Copyright," a space, three characters '(C)' (or a U+00A9 UTF copyright sign), a space, and the range of years. A varying amount of spaces and tabs are permitted, but there must be no spaces around the dash character in YEAR-YEAR. Examples:

            A whitespace, or multiple, required
            |   |           No space between years
            |   |           |
   Copyright (C)        YYYY-YYYY
   Copyright: (C)       YYYY-YYYY
            |
            A colon is optional

By default, certain files and paths are always ignored, such as version control directories, backup files, object files, and binary files according to Perl's "-T" file test. Run the program with the option --help-exclude to see the excluded path list.

REQUIRED ARGUMENTS

Either FILE or PATH with "--recursive" option.

OPTIONS

Run options

In automatic mode, the author's name is read from the environment variable NAME, and only lines matching 'Copyright.*$NAME' are affected. If NAME is not set, the information is read from EMAIL.

If neither NAME nor EMAIL exists in the environment, or if their values are not in a recognizable format (see section ENVIRONMENT), this option does nothing.

This option effectively tries to preset a value for the --line option.

Preset --include to match common code files: .c, .h, .cc, .hh, .cpp, .c++, .hpp, .C, .pl, .py, .sh, and .rb.
Turn on debugging. LEVEL can be in the range of 0-10.
Change license paragraphs that refer to the FSF address. The FSF's current recommendation is to redirect inquiries about licenses to their URL.

Effectively replace the paragraphs:

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this package; if not, write to the Free Software
  Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

With this:

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
Include files matching regexp. The match is done against whole path.

If this option is not supplied, every file is automatically included. The matches can be further filtered by using option --exclude.

This option can be used multiple times. See also option --code.

Change only lines which match REGEXP. The match is case-insensitive.
Recursively search all directories given in command line.
Change only files whose content matches REGEXP. The file is read in as a one big string so that it's possible to match using Perl regular expressions across the whole file. An example: '(?smi)This.*multi.*line.*match'. See perlre(1) for more information about 'smi' and other modifiers.

This option can be used as a preliminary Content criteria, to select files before --line option finds the correct Copyright lines.

Run in test mode. Show what would happen. No files are changed.
Print informational messages. Increase numeric LEVEL for more verbosity.
Ignore files matching regexp. The match is done against whole path. The option can be used multiple times.

This option is applied after possible --include matches.

Update files using YEAR. Value must be four digits.

The default operation is to use currect year, so this option is not necessary in normal use. Use case: you plan to take a long holiday before year's end and want to update the next year's value beforehand.

Disable updating year.

Miscellaneus options

Display help.
Display default values used to exclude paths and files.
Display help in HTML format.
Display help in manual page man(1) format.
Display contact and version information.

EXAMPLES

The primary use is to update files to reflect current year; option --year is implicit:

   copyright-update *

To test what would happen:

   copyright-update --verbose 1 --test *

Update only C-code file:

   copyright-update --verbose 1 --include '\.[ch]$' --recursive .

It is possible to restrict updating files recursively to only those files whose content match regexp. Here, the lines affected are those that match --line regular expression.

   copyright-update \
        --regexp  '(?i)Author:.*John.*Doe' \
        --line    '\bFoo\b' \
        --ignore  '\.(bak|bup|[~#]])$' \
        --verbose 1 \
        --year    2013 \
        --test \
        --recursive \
        .

TROUBLESHOOTING

See option --debug.

ENVIRONMENT

In the form "firstname.lastname@example.com"; that is, without the angles <>. If set, the value is used in option --auto only if environment variable NAME is not set.

In order to find first and lastname, the localpart in email address must match case insensitive regexp '^[a-z-]+\.[a-z-]+@':

    address@example.com            Not used, not in form First.Last
    +------ +----------
    mr.first.lastname@example.com  Not used, likewise
    +---------------- +----------
    |                 |
    Localpart         Domain part
In the form "Firstname Lastname". If set, the value is used in option --auto.

DIAGNOSTICS

See option "--debug LEVEL"

EXIT STATUS

Value 0 on normal exit and non-zero on error.

CONFIGURATION

None.

DEPENDENCIES

None. Uses only standard Perl modules.

INCOMPATIBILITIES

None.

FILES

None.

SEE ALSO

licensecheck(1)

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

The Copyright stanzas searched with option --fsf-address must be exactly like in the FSF recommendation in order for them to be noticed. See STANDARDS.

STANDARDS

"How to use GNU licenses for your own software" http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl-howto.html

"Information for maintainers of GNU software (6.5 Copyright Notices)" http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html

"Information for maintainers of GNU software (6.6 License Notices)" http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/License-Notices.html#License-Notices

AVAILABILITY

Homepage is at https://github.com/jaalto/project--copyright-update

AUTHOR

Jari Aalto

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2000-2025 Jari Aalto

This program is free software; you can redistribute and/or modify program under the terms of GNU General Public license either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. For more information, see see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

2025-04-04 perl v5.40.1