# BUG: Cannot use bright colors

3 messages from 2020-07-20 to 2020-07-20. Participants: Martian Chronicles, SZEDER Gábor, Jeff King.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/53885

## Martian Chronicles, 2020-07-20 16:29

Subject: BUG: Cannot use bright colors
Message-ID: <6244191595262309@mail.yandex.ru>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/6244191595262309%40mail.yandex.ru

```
Cannot configure git to use brightred, neither on Windows nor on Ubuntu. 

Steps to reproduce: 

1. Create ~/.gitconfig with the two lines (or add to them to this file, if it exists):

[color.status]
        untracked = brightred

2. run `git status` from a directory with untracked files

Expected: output in brightred
Actual on Linux:
error: invalid color value: brightred fatal: bad config variable 'color.status.untracked' in file '/home/<username>/.gitconfig' at line 2 

Actual on windows:
 brightred=normal=white.

```

## SZEDER Gábor, 2020-07-20 16:55

Subject: Re: BUG: Cannot use bright colors
Message-ID: <20200720165535.GI11341@szeder.dev>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20200720165535.GI11341%40szeder.dev
In-Reply-To: <6244191595262309@mail.yandex.ru>

```
On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 07:29:52PM +0300, Martian Chronicles wrote:
> Cannot configure git to use brightred, neither on Windows nor on Ubuntu. 
> 
> Steps to reproduce: 
> 
> 1. Create ~/.gitconfig with the two lines (or add to them to this file, if it exists):
> 
> [color.status]
>         untracked = brightred
> 
> 2. run `git status` from a directory with untracked files
> 
> Expected: output in brightred
> Actual on Linux:
> error: invalid color value: brightred fatal: bad config variable 'color.status.untracked' in file '/home/<username>/.gitconfig' at line 2 
> 
> Actual on windows:
>  brightred=normal=white.

Bright colors are supported since v2.26.0.  What Git version did you
try?


```

## Jeff King, 2020-07-20 17:13

Subject: Re: BUG: Cannot use bright colors
Message-ID: <20200720171356.GA2045458@coredump.intra.peff.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20200720171356.GA2045458%40coredump.intra.peff.net
In-Reply-To: <20200720165535.GI11341@szeder.dev>

```
On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 06:55:35PM +0200, SZEDER Gábor wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 07:29:52PM +0300, Martian Chronicles wrote:
> > Cannot configure git to use brightred, neither on Windows nor on Ubuntu. 
> > 
> > Steps to reproduce: 
> > 
> > 1. Create ~/.gitconfig with the two lines (or add to them to this file, if it exists):
> > 
> > [color.status]
> >         untracked = brightred
> > 
> > 2. run `git status` from a directory with untracked files
> > 
> > Expected: output in brightred
> > Actual on Linux:
> > error: invalid color value: brightred fatal: bad config variable 'color.status.untracked' in file '/home/<username>/.gitconfig' at line 2 
> > 
> > Actual on windows:
> >  brightred=normal=white.
> 
> Bright colors are supported since v2.26.0.  What Git version did you
> try?

It sounds like two different versions. :) If Git isn't complaining about
the color name on Windows, then it's probably sending out the correct
ANSI codes.  But whether those do anything you can see depends on your
terminal emulator. I don't know what options there are on Windows.

For the Windows console, there's an extra stdio layer that handles these
ANSI codes. It looks like compat/mingw.c's set_attr() would need to be
updated, but from reading it, I'm not sure it would even support these
extra colors. Probably "bold red" is the best you could do.

-Peff

```