Re: [PATCH] help: colorize man pages

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 19, 2021, 01:08 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqfsyj1qe1.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <YKRSlFcFAcHcR3uY@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>

"brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> writes:

> In general, this is made worse because Git doesn't honor the unofficial
> but widely supported NO_COLOR[0], so reading the documentation is
> obligatory.

I vaguely recall that we were contacted by NO_COLOR folks to be an early supporter of their cause to break the chicken-and-egg problem they were hagving, and (unhelpfully) answered with "sure, when we see enough people support it---otherwise we'd end up having to keep essentially a dead code that supports a convention that is not all that useful".

> [0] https://no-color.org/

I wonderr if it is just a matter of hooking into want_color(), like this?

 color.c | 7 ++++++-
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git c/color.c w/color.c
index 64f52a4f93..2516ef7275 100644
--- c/color.c
+++ w/color.c
@@ -373,12 +373,17 @@ int want_color_fd(int fd, int var)
 	 * we always write the same value, but it's still wrong. This function
 	 * is listed in .tsan-suppressions for the time being.
 	 */
-
+	static int no_color = -1;
 	static int want_auto[3] = { -1, -1, -1 };
 
 	if (fd < 1 || fd >= ARRAY_SIZE(want_auto))
 		BUG("file descriptor out of range: %d", fd);
 
+	if (no_color < 0)
+		no_color = !!getenv("NO_COLOR");
+	if (no_color)
+		return 0;
+
 	if (var < 0)
 		var = git_use_color_default;