README

CLI tool that scans a project's source files and reports (or fixes) files whose copyright header block doesn't match one of the configured templates.

Installation

composer require --dev sergiynezbritskiy/copyright-checker

Usage

vendor/bin/copyright [options] [<file|directory> ...]

<file|directory> arguments are optional: if omitted, the locations array from .copyright.dist is used instead (see below). If neither is given, the command errors.

By default, only violations, fixes, and fix failures are printed per-file; passing Symfony Console's standard -v flag also prints an [OK] line for every file that already has a correct header. The summary line's counts always include all files regardless of verbosity.

Options

Option	Description
`--exclude=<path>`	Path to exclude from scanning (repeatable). A bare name with no `/` (e.g. `vendor`, `Test`) matches a directory/file of that name at any depth, like `.gitignore`; a value containing `/` is matched relative to `--root-dir` (or, when sourced from the config file, relative to that file's own directory — see below). Excluded paths don't need to exist on disk.
`--extension=<ext>`	File extension to check, e.g. `php`, `xml`, `css`, `js` (repeatable). At least one is required.
`--template=<text>`	Literal copyright template text to check for (repeatable). At least one is required. Matching is exact — include whatever comment syntax (`/* */`, `<!-- -->`, `#`, ...) is appropriate for the file type directly in the template text.
`--colors` / `--no-colors`	Force ANSI colored output on/off. Default: `--no-colors`.
`--fix`	Fix files whose header doesn't match. If more than one `--template` is configured, you'll be asked interactively which one to apply to every fixed file in the run (or pass `--fix-apply`).
`--fix-apply=<N>`	1-based index into the merged `--template` list to apply non-interactively when fixing.
`--root-dir=<path>`	Project root: where `.copyright.dist` is looked for and the base for relative paths. Defaults to the consuming project's root when installed via Composer.
`--config-path=<path>`	Path to the config file, relative to `--root-dir` unless absolute. Defaults to `<root-dir>/.copyright.dist`. Errors if the given path doesn't exist (unlike the default, which is silently optional).

`.copyright.dist`

Any of the above (except --root-dir) can also be configured in a .copyright.dist file at the project root — a plain PHP file returning an array:

<?php

return [
    'exclude' => ['vendor', 'var'],
    'extension' => ['php'],
    'template' => [
        <<<'TEMPLATE'
        /*
         * Copyright (c) 2026 My Company
         */
        TEMPLATE,
    ],
    'colors' => true,
    'fix' => false,
    'locations' => ['src', 'tests'],
];

CLI options take precedence over .copyright.dist: for array options (exclude, extension, template), passing the option on the CLI at all wholly replaces the file's array for that option (values are not merged/unioned).

locations is different: it's only a fallback for the <file|directory> arguments, used exactly when the command is invoked with none. Passing any path argument on the CLI ignores locations entirely (paths aren't merged with it).

Relative locations entries, and relative exclude entries containing a /, are resolved against the directory containing the config file itself — not --root-dir. These are normally the same directory, but they can differ when --config-path points somewhere else entirely (e.g. the app lives in an html subdirectory but .copyright.dist sits one level up):

php html/vendor/bin/copyright --root-dir=html --config-path=/var/www/.copyright.dist

Here, a locations entry of 'html/src' in that config file resolves to /var/www/html/src, relative to /var/www (where the config file lives), regardless of what --root-dir is. Bare-name exclude entries (no /) are unaffected either way, since they match at any depth rather than resolving against a base directory. CLI-supplied --exclude/path arguments are unaffected too — those always resolve relative to --root-dir, since they're supplied at invocation time rather than authored inside a config file.

Standalone usage (without Composer)

Cloning this repository and running bin/copyright directly (rather than via vendor/bin/copyright as an installed dependency) requires --root-dir to be passed explicitly, since there's no consuming project to infer it from:

php bin/copyright src --root-dir=/path/to/project --extension=php --template="..."

Known limitations

--fix normalizes the whole file to LF line endings on write-back (not just the header block), so files authored with CRLF line endings will show a full-file line-ending diff after a fix.
--fix replaces an outdated header in place by using the template's own first and last line as delimiters. For single-line templates (where the first and last line are the same line), there's no separate stable delimiter to anchor on — the whole line is the variable content. An old, differently-worded single-line header is therefore not detected as "outdated" and replaced; the new line is prepended above the untouched old one instead. Multi-line templates that wrap the variable content (year, company name, ...) in generic delimiter lines like /* / */ don't have this limitation.

Development

docker compose build
docker compose run --rm php composer install
docker compose run --rm php composer run all

sergiynezbritskiy / copyright-checker

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