[pacman-dev] [PATCH 06/16] add a config settings and flag for colors

Simon Gomizelj simongmzlj at gmail.com
Mon Mar 4 17:22:06 EST 2013


> Should we allow an argument of always, never, auto here to match
> --color?

I initially considered to do that but decided against it. From my
perspective, the only reason to ever use 'always' is when you want to
preserve colour when piping and letting it be forced on at the config
level will cause more headaches than its worth because users should be
able to assume that piping pacman's output should just work.

For example:

    pacman -Sl core > dumpfile

Setting Color to always will pollute `dumpfile` with colour codes. We
should be able to assume piped output will be clean (unless overridden).

It makes much more sense to insist that forcing colours on must be
explicit:

    pacman -Sl core --color=always | less -R


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