With template files Eclipse, it is possible to specify at the outset of a project to place the copyright commented header files of a project. This mechanism, however, suffers from several limitations:

• Changing the template of all types of files in a project is a binding transaction.
• A development project is often composed of several Eclipse projects (including projects J2EE). The templates must be defined on all Eclipse projects.
• The templates available do not cover all the needs.
• Some templates can be non-amendable.
• The templates can be applied again on existing files.
• Changing the template of all types of files in a project is a binding transaction.
• A development project is often composed of several Eclipse projects (including J2EE projects). The templates must be defined on all Eclipse projects.
• The templates available do not cover all needs.
• Some templates can be non-modifiable.
• The templates can be re-applied on existing files.

The last point is particularly important. In case of a change in copyright comment, the application of change on all existing files in a project is a long and tedious. Here Copyright Wizard proves its interest.

Copyright Wizard is a plugin to implement a copyright comment on the header of files of a project. The wizard lets you set the text of the comment and select the source files on which to applied it.

The Copyright Wizard features are:

• A single text message can be applied to several different file types (java, XML ...) in the same operation. The format of comment is automatically determined by the wizard from the file ContentType.
• The comments formats are adjustable in the preferences for each Eclipse ContentType inheriting Text base type.
• The plugin comes with several formats: Text, Java and XML.
• The text of comments are adjustable in the preferences and therefore did not need to be defined every time in the wizard. The wizard, however, gives the ability to customize the selected text or enter a specific text.
• Some content types can be totally excluded from copyright. By default the wizard excludes Ant build files, JAR manifests and all content types provided by the WTP and PDE plug-ins.
• The wizard also provides the possibility of adding a license file to selected projects.
• The plugin comes with header comments and files licenses of several open source licenses: EPL, APL, GPL, LGPL.
• The wizard allows to filter out files to be addressed on several criteria:
  • All files must be in text format.
  • Files or folders whose names begin with "." are filtered.
  • Selection of projects.
  • Pattern on the filenames for selection or exclusion of files.
  • Comments header that already exists in the files.
• The user can choose from a list the filtered files on which to apply the copyright.
• Substitution variables can be used to adapt the comment to each file.
• Comment headers already present in files are recognized and can be replaced.
• It is possible, for a given header format, to tell the wizard to leave unchanged the first line and insert comment header from the second line. This is optionally conditioned by a pattern of recognition of the first line, based on a regular expression.
• Copyright settings (header text and formats) can be defined in projects properties. In this case they are applied by default by the wizard. However the user as the possibility to override those settings in the wizard.

Latest version:
1.4.0 - 20 jan 2012