package header-check

README.md

header-check

This header-check tool uses checksums to manage headers in a software project. It can list all existing headers, and replace them using checksums as identifiers.

Usage

To use, just run:

header-check

The execution with scan the current directory and sub-directories for files, extract headers from them and generate 3 reports :

• headers-ml.txt for ML files

• headers-cc.txt for C/C++ files

• headers-sh.txt for SH files

You can then inspect these files to check all the headers present in the project. For each header, the header is displayed, with a unique ID (checksum) and a list of locations.

If you are happy, you can then clear temporary files:

header-check --clean

After inspection, you might want to add a default header to files with no header:

header-check --add-default HEADER_ID

Note that only files in the same category as the header can be modified (i.e. a ML header can only be added to ML files), so that you can specify this option for every category on the same command.

You might also want to replace some headers by other headers:

header-check --replace SRC_ID:DST_ID

will replace the source header by the destination header.

Since replacement must always be done using checksums, if you want to create a new header, you will need to insert it in a file, do a run to get its identifier, and then replace it.

If you want to replace multiple identifiers by the same identifier, you can also use:

header-check --replace-by DST_ID --from SRC1_ID --from SRC2_ID

During the scan, header-check uses a default configuration to ignore or select files. You can extend this configuration using files .header-check in directories (their config will apply to where they are and their sub-directories). If the default configuration is wrong for you, you can use the option --empty to start with an empty configuration.

The format of .header-check is a list of lines starting with a command and a list of space-separated case-insensitive entries (comments can be introduced with # at the beginning of the line):

# files to ignore
IGNORE-FILES opam meta

# directories to ignore
IGNORE-DIRS _build .git .svn _opam

# extensions to ignore
IGNORE-EXT .cmx .cmo .mlt .md .toml

# headers to ignore
IGNORE-HEADERS fb748e994094746482684

# extensions for the ML files
ML-EXT .ml .mli .mll .mlp .ml4

# extensions for C/C++ files
CC-EXT .c .h .cpp .mly .js

# extensions for SH files
SH-EXT .sh .ac .in .m4

To check the default configuration, use:

header-check --show-config

Headers are supposed to start and end with the same beginning of line:

(************************** for OCaml
/************************** for C-likes
########################### for shells

with internal char repeated at least 50 times.