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In Git Bash on Windows 7, I occasionally have something happen that causes the color coding to fail when running cucumber scenarios or rspec specs.

Occasionally, it is randomly fixed (where randomly == I don't know what I did to cause it to be fixed).

So when I run:

$ bundle exec cucumber features

Or

$ bundle exec rspec spec

instead of seeing this in color:

 ......

 3 scenarios (3 passed)
 6 steps (6 passed)

I see something like:

 [32m.[0m[32m.[0m[32m.[0m[32m.[0m[32m.[0m[32m.[0m

 3 scenarios ([32m3 passed[0m)
 6 steps ([32m6 passed[0m)

I know these are the code representations of the colors, but I don't know why it stops displaying the colors nor do I know how to fix it. What am I missing?

Output from git config --list:

core.symlinks=false
core.autocrlf=true
color.diff=auto
pack.packsizelimit=2g
help.format=html
http.sslcainfo=/bin/curl-ca-bundle.crt 
sendemail.smtpserver=/bin/msmtp.exe 
user.name=John Uhri 
user.email= ***** 
color.branch=auto 
color.diff=auto 
color.interactive=auto 
color.status=auto 
core.repositoryformatversion=0 
core.filemode=false 
core.bare=false 
core.logallrefupdates=true
core.symlinks=false 
core.ignorecase=true 
core.hidedotfiles=dotGitOnly 
remote.origin.fetch=+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* 
branch.master.remote=origin 
branch.master.merge=refs/heads/master
rtn
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y0mbo
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7 Answers7

12

On windows, git Bash uses the built in terminal which is rolled into the cmd prompt. If you install cygwin you can use the mintty terminal emulator (Installed on the start menu as "Cygwin Terminal").

Why is this important? Because the windows cmd prompt term does not interpret ANSI escape sequences. It uses M$ color control scheme instead. If the program you are using does not switch to this scheme on windows, or go through a filter, then you will see the raw escape characters. Cygwin's mintty console has full support for these codes.

If the colors usually work, this is a bug in cucumber/rspec from porting. Somebody missed a check for windows when printing the colors or something. Until this gets fixed, a work around is the following python script:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Filter ANSI escapes from stdin to stdout
from __future__ import print_function
from colorama import init
import sys
init()

for line in sys.stdin.readlines():
    print(line)

You will need to install the colorama library for this. Then just pipe your output through the script:

$ bundle exec rspec spec | colorFilter.py
Ben
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Spencer Rathbun
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  • Is there not a way to get colors to display in the shell that is used by default when msysgit is installed (Git Bash)? – Travis Northcutt Apr 02 '12 at 11:28
  • @tnorthcutt The problem is not the [shell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_%28computing%29), but the [term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_%28computers%29). Unless you run the x-windows emulator packaged with cygwin, *and* one of the terminal emulators, then you are stuck with the windows terminal emulator. That is packaged *together* with the cmd shell. Since you can't change emulators, and that is where the problem is, you have to convert from ANSI escape sequences to windows commands as noted. – Spencer Rathbun Apr 02 '12 at 12:28
9

After a number of fruitless attempts to get some colors on my Windows 7 bash terminals (msysgit with console2), I stumbled on Jason Karns blog 'ANSI color in Windows Shells'.

All I had to do was unzip ansicon.exe to a permanent folder and run via cmd in that folder:

ansicon.exe -i

All bash logs now have colors instead of the [32m or [0m tags, woo!

corg
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  • How can I make it to work always? Right now I have to do that before I run the git bash every time :( – naneri Mar 11 '16 at 12:09
3

I have had the same pb, it seems that if you unset the TERM environment variable it works again.

VGE
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2

I fixed this with Git For Windows (V2.5.3) running Git within PowerShell (in Window's normal console) by setting three environment variables:

  1. TERM=msys
  2. PAGER='"C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\less.exe"' (note the double quotes need to be part of the value).
  3. Including --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS in LESSs value (so with my other preferences: --LONG-PROMPT --no-init --quit-if-one-screen --RAW-CONTROL-CHARS).
Richard
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  • FWIW, for Git Bash (version 2.19.windows.1) running in a mintty, I only had to do #3. TERM is still xterm and PAGER is unset. – Jabberwock Jan 09 '19 at 20:43
2

I use @aslakhellesoy's "wac" project. It's a little annoying because you have to remember to pipe your commands through it. But it's the only thing I've seen work.

https://github.com/aslakhellesoy/wac

ryber
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1

Try installing the win32console gem.

gem install win32console
David Radcliffe
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    I had done that previously. Didn't work. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the gem, but to no avail. – y0mbo May 07 '11 at 14:59
  • Did you ever resolve this? Are you using a 64bit machine? I'm having the same issue with the basic cmd for windows. It's damn infuriating.. – Richard Fortune Jan 15 '12 at 23:26
  • @RichardFortune - the gem doesn't help with this. You'll need to either (a) install ANSICON (See the answer by @corg), or (2) use a shell other than cmd: Console2, bash, and ConEmu are some to consider. I use ConEmu and love it. Others love Console 2. – aenw Jul 04 '15 at 07:35
0

Richard's suggestions, even in cmd.exe (not PowerShell), worked for me.

I'm running: Windows 7 (64-bit) and Git-Bash: GNU bash, version 3.1.23(6)-release (i686-pc-msys)

I had to change the PAGER location to match my system. 

export PAGER='"C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\less.exe"'
the_unknown_spirit
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TX-St3ve
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