License Maven Plugin

The official and original Maven plugin to manage license headers in your source files.

Overview

When developing an open-source or enterprise project, every source file typically needs a license header. This plugin automates the entire lifecycle of those headers:

• license:check — verify that all source files have a valid header (fails the build if any are missing)
• license:format — add missing headers; update existing ones to match the current template
• license:remove — remove headers that were previously added by the plugin

Additional features:

• Built-in templates for 30+ open-source licenses (Apache 2, MIT, GPL, LGPL, EPL, …)
• Variable substitution with ${year}, ${owner}, POM properties, and custom placeholders
• Flexible file type mappings — support any extension with the right comment style
• Multi-licensing support — apply two or more headers to the same file
• Dependency license enforcement — fail the build when dependencies violate your policies
• SCM integration — derive copyright years automatically from Git, Subversion, or filesystem metadata

Documentation

Full documentation: https://mathieu.carbou.me/license-maven-plugin/

Quick Setup

Add the plugin to your pom.xml. Replace 5.0.0 with the latest release:

<plugin>
  <groupId>com.mycila</groupId>
  <artifactId>license-maven-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>5.0.0</version>
  <configuration>
    <properties>
      <owner>Your Name or Organisation</owner>
      <email>you@example.com</email>
    </properties>
    <licenseSets>
      <licenseSet>
        <header>com/mycila/maven/plugin/license/templates/APACHE-2.txt</header>
        <excludes>
          <exclude>**/README*</exclude>
          <exclude>src/test/resources/**</exclude>
          <exclude>src/main/resources/**</exclude>
        </excludes>
      </licenseSet>
    </licenseSets>
  </configuration>
  <dependencies>
    <!-- Optional: automatically derive copyright years from Git history -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.mycila</groupId>
      <artifactId>license-maven-plugin-git</artifactId>
      <version>5.0.0</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>check-license</id>
      <phase>verify</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>check</goal>
      </goals>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

Then run:

# Add/update headers
mvn license:format

# Check headers (also runs automatically on mvn verify)
mvn license:check

Java Version Compatibility

Plugin version	Minimum Java
>= 5.0.0	Java 11
4.x (last: 4.6)	Java 8

Version 6.0.0 and later will require Java 17.

License

Apache License 2.0