Re: [msysGit] Re: Need your help with MinGW Issue 17: --color options don't work (produce garbage)

From: Reece Dunn <msclrhd@googlemail.com>
Date: Aug 15, 2007, 08:31 UTC
Message-ID: <3f4fd2640708150131o7578c2efy806891fc3def7429@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <a1bbc6950708150103v35330b47o781fb5d74e3d9aef@mail.gmail.com>

On 15/08/07, Dmitry Kakurin <dmitry.kakurin@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 30 quoted lines

> On 8/15/07, Reece Dunn <msclrhd@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 15/08/07, Dmitry Kakurin wrote:
> > > Here are the facts:
> > >
> > > 'git branch --color' produces garbage:
> > > $ git branch --color
> > >   devel←[m
> > >   dima←[m
> > >   dmitryk←[m
> > > * ←[32mmaster←[m
> > >   mob←[m
> > >   next←[m
> > >
> > > 'git branch --color | cat' produces expected colored output.
> > >
> > > I've traced it down to printf statement in gdb and it sends the right
> > > esc-sequence.
> > > Where should I look next?
> >
> > Windows doesn't recognise the *nix printf colour codes.
> >
> > Piping through cat will be going through cygwin/mingw emulation,
> > translating the colour codes to the correct API calls.
>
> That's my question. If there is a way to build cat.exe to do this kind
> of emulation under MinGW then I should be able to do the same for
> git.exe.
> I hope I just need to #define something while building Git.
> But what is it?

You will need to implement cat (or something similar) on MinGW that will process the *nix colour codes and then pass that to SetConsoleTextAttributes. For example:

    int ch = 0;
    while(( ch = getch()) != EOF )
    {
        if( /*ch is part of a colour sequence*/ )
        {
            SetConsoleTextAttribute( GetStdHandle(...),
win_color_from_color_sequence(...));
        }
        else putc( ch );
    }

I don't believe that MinGW has got this working for cat, that is why one that supports colours on Windows needs to be written.

- Reece