Re: automake: tap-driver.sh: cleanup and revival.

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Warren Young <address@hidden> writes:

> On Oct 25, 2017, at 8:56 AM, Bob Friesenhahn <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>>> It's also crazy that "--color-tests=y" or "--color-tests=1" won't work
>> 
>> While I like color in photos and nature, automatic colorization of
>> output often causes problems for me since it often renders the text
>> unreadable.
>
> Why, exactly?
>
> I ask because the default color scheme of some terminal emulators
> makes the dark blue on black text difficult for me to read, but that’s
> easily fixed by switching the color scheme.
>
>> It also introduces terminal escape codes into the text output, which can 
>> cause issues if captured output is later displayed on something other than a 
>> ANSI terminal.
>
> Both problems are caused by programs that hard-code literal ANSI/VT
> codes into text output.  While ANSI-family terminal protocols have
> taken over the world now, that’s still a bad practice which needs to
> be smacked down wherever it reappears.
>
> Well-behaved programs (e.g. GNU ls --color=auto, colordiff…) suppress
> color output when stdout is not a terminal.  They do that by making
> calls like isatty(3) if written in C or test(1) -t if written in
> shell.
>
> As for the portability of ANSI terminal escape codes, it’s still best
> to delegate such things to curses or libraries like it, despite the
> near ubiquity of ANSI-family terminal emulators.

Colors are already automatically used when possible [1] and can be
disabled with the AM_COLOR_TESTS environment variable.

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin
GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761  070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

[1] 
https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#Simple-tests-and-color_002dtests