Pdfcovers takes a list of pdf files and generates a pdf containing the first page (cover) of each one.
It can help you cope with archives, usually external disks, which contains pdfs with cryptic names like TR023213.pdf download.pdf paper.pdf MIT-LCS-1021.pdf etc and you no longer remember how you acquired each one. Pdfcovers also adds a text annotation to each page with the full path name of the origin pdf so that you can retrieve it.
Pdfcovers is written in Go and tested with go1.12. It can be easily installed with the go tool
go get github.com/anastasop/pdfcovers
pdfcovers [-s] [-o file] [-lf <license file>] [-ln <customer name>] [pdf files]
The -o flag causes it to output the pdf result to file, otherwise to stdout
The -s flag causes it to read a lists of filenames from stdin, usually with find like find . -name *.pdf | pdfcovers -s. If both arguments files and -s are used then the argument files are displayed first in the output. This can be used to add a cover to the collection.
The -lf optional flag point to a file containing a license from unidoc. See the section on licensing for details.
The -ln optional flag is the unidoc customer name for the license. See the section on licensing for details.
# extract the covers of all pdfs in the current directory
pdfcovers -o index.pdf *.pdf
# extract the covers of all pdfs in the current directory
# and redirect the output to a display program
pdfcovers *.pdf | 9 page
# extract the covers of all pdfs in the current directory tree
find . -name *.pdf | pdfcovers -s -o index.pdf
# extract the covers of all pdfs in the current directory tree
# and add a cover page to the outpus
find . -name *.pdf | pdfcovers -s -o index.pdf cover-page.pdf
# Another way to extract the covers without the -s flag
find . -name *.pdf -exec pdfcovers -o index.pdf '{}' '+'
Pdfcovers is licensed under the AGPL This is a requirement by unidoc, the creators of unipdf, the library that powers pdfcovers. You can check the above links for details on licensing.
If you don't have a unidoc license you can use pdfcovers but a watermark appears to the bottom of each page. Also it prints Unlicensed copy of unidoc. To get rid of the watermark - Please get a license on https://unidoc.io. This is not a major issue as pdfcovers is for personal use and the output is not excepted to be published. If however this is annoying you can apply to unidoc for a free license and use the -lf and -ln flag to hide the watermark.