CI: License Header Checks#

The script dev/check_license_headers.sh ensures that all checked-in files contain appropriate copyright and license headers.

Situation#

Simply adding a license file to the project has two potential flaws:

When the file is copied elsewhere, copyright and license information would be lost.
APPXC uses two licenses and it may not be clear which one applies for which file.

As a consequence, each file must include the copyright and license information in its header. The remaining problem is that adding this information is easy to forget.

Approach#

The script dev/check_license_headers.sh wraps the Python script src/appxc_dev/check_license_headers.py which:

scans all files which are checked in
defines expected licenses per file type (and folder)
ignores explicit mentions from LICENSE

The script is used as part of the static checks.