Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] chainlint: sidestep impoverished macOS "terminfo"

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Nov 11, 2022, 17:15 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cRCSg=iVLUmLG=W47ofojU56CcFsobNZK5z5h9LdzXs0Q@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAPig+cRwDeGyniiVGqmdMePgmR6GiYQOvNP+GUeT__zpuWV1Fg@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Nov 11, 2022 at 11:44 AM Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Fri, Nov 11, 2022 at 10:02 AM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
> <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I also wonder to what extent this needs to be re-inventing
> > Term::ANSIColor, which has shipped with Perl since 5.6, so we can use it
> > without worrying about version compat, but that's another topic...
>
> Gah, why didn't I know about this sooner?! [...]
>
> Since it's been shipping with Perl for quite some time,
> Term::ANSIColor would be a much nicer solution; worth looking into.

In retrospect, I may have looked at Term::ANSIColor at the time but decided to avoid it since it assumes the terminal understands ANSI codes, and I was looking for a more general solution which respected the terminal's capabilities as reported by "terminfo".

And, reading up on it now, I'm not finding much benefit to Term::ANSIColor over what is already implemented in chainlint.pl. Particularly disheartening is that (as far as I can tell) Term::ANSIColor doesn't provide a way to interrogate whether or not it is suitable to use ANSI codes with the terminal in question, but instead makes a blanket assumption that the terminal supports ANSI codes unconditionally.

So, I think the fixed-up colorizing as implemented by v2 of this patch series is good enough for now. It can always be revisited later if something warrants it.