Re: [PATCH] color diagnostics markers

[Marc Glisse <marc dot glisse at inria dot fr>]

On Wed, 10 Apr 2013, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 1:42 PM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
> <lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9 April 2013 15:21, Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > white).  The default is still -fdiagnostics-color=never, can be changed
> > > later on.
> >
> > Apart from my comments elsewhere
> > (http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2013-04/msg00614.html), the patch
> > looks fine to me. But perhaps we should change the default to auto, at
> > least during Stage 1, to find out whether some bug was introduced. If
> > agreed, I could do this in a follow-up patch that also disables colors
> > for the testsuite.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Manuel.
>
> I am still of the opinion that the default should be discussed differently,
> and I strongly suggest that it defaults to "never".  I do not believe we do
> need to do otherwise now.
>
> As I stated before, our pursuit of enabling everything new thing by default
> may have made C++ diagnostics more terrifying.

Hello,

I would like to suggest that the default be "auto" when the environment 
variable GCC_COLORS is defined. It can stay "never" otherwise (I would 
prefer "auto" as well, colors don't make the diagnostics any longer, only 
more readable, and an empty GCC_COLORS is an easy way to disable them, but 
I see you have a strong opinion on this so I won't insist).

Defining a variable in my environment counts as a clear intention. And 
without it, if I want to always use colors, I need to either type the 
option every time, or create wrappers for every version of every front-end 
that I use.

For grep, I can have colors by default with GREP_OPTIONS=--color=auto. Any 
alternative mean to enable colors by default would be ok with me.

By the way, I was unlucky enough to try colors by compiling a non-existing 
file, but this message doesn't get any colors:

g++: error: zz.cc: No such file or directory
g++: fatal error: no input files

(not that it needs them, it is short enough)

--
Marc Glisse