Update Copyright

Refresh the copyright holder and year range in your LICENSE from nova.config.json.

Summary

The update-copyright recipe rewrites the copyright line of a LICENSE file so the holder name and year range stay in sync with project.legalName and project.startingYear in nova.config.json. It reuses the exact substitution the generate must-haves license command uses, so the regenerated body is byte-identical except for the holder and year.

The recipe never mangles a LICENSE that was not produced by Nova. Before writing, it fingerprints the on-disk file against the bundled template for the configured license. If the file has been hand-edited, is a custom license, or does not match the template for project.license, the recipe skips it and leaves it untouched.

Prerequisites

• project.license — The SPDX identifier must be set in nova.config.json so the recipe can locate the matching template.
• project.legalName — The copyright holder name written into the refreshed LICENSE.
• project.startingYear — The first year of the range. The recipe pairs it with the current year to build the range (a single year when they match).
• An existing LICENSE — The recipe updates a file in the project root; it does not create one. Use generate must-haves license to create the initial file.

Behavior

The recipe follows an anti-mangle algorithm so it can only ever rewrite a file it recognizes as its own.

• Fingerprint gate — A pattern is built from the license template text with the holder and year positions as capture groups. The on-disk LICENSE must match this pattern exactly. If it does not, the recipe warns that the file looks hand-edited or custom and returns without writing.
• Format-aware — Because the fingerprint is derived from the template, per-license copyright formatting is handled automatically: MIT and Proprietary use Copyright (c) <year> <holder>, BSD adds a comma, and Apache-2.0 uses an indented line without (c).
• Placeholder-less licenses — Templates with no holder or year to substitute (for example CC0-1.0 and Unlicense) have nothing to refresh, so the recipe logs an informational skip.
• Idempotent — When the regenerated content already matches the file on disk, the recipe reports that the copyright is already up to date and makes no write.

Settings

Settings are configured in nova.config.json under the recipes.license key. The update-copyright recipe is controlled by a single enabled toggle:

{
  "recipes": {
    "license": {
      "update-copyright": {
        "enabled": true
      }
    }
  }
}

When the recipe is not enabled, it warns and returns without touching any files.

Usage

Options