Bug #71850 for Test-Harness: --color doesn't work when output is piped

Sat Oct 22 09:27:33 2011 kuno [...] frob.nl - Ticket created

Subject:

--color doesn't work when output is piped

prove --color t/testfile.t produces colored output on a terminal but not when piped. This is easy to test by running "prove --color t/testfile.t | cat" on a terminal. I'm using perl v5.10.1 supplied by Debian Stable, and Test::Harness 3.23 installed from source / through CPAN.

Sat Oct 22 18:54:32 2011 schwern [...] pobox.com - Correspondence added

Subject:	Re: [rt.cpan.org #71850] --color doesn't work when output is piped
Date:	Sat, 22 Oct 2011 15:54:21 -0700
To:	bug-Test-Harness [...] rt.cpan.org
From:	Michael G Schwern <schwern [...] pobox.com>

This is caused by Test::Harness choosing TAP::Formatter::File for output if output is not to a TTY. TAP::Formatter::File does not output color. IMO I don't see why it shouldn't, if the user explicitly asked for color give them color. That would be a matter of moving _set_colors, _output_success and _failure_output from TAP::Formatter::Console up into TAP::Formatter::Base so all formatters have it available.

Sat Oct 22 18:54:33 2011 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Sun Jun 09 14:12:14 2013 mgrimes [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

On Sat Oct 22 18:54:32 2011, schwern@pobox.com wrote: Show quoted text

> This is caused by Test::Harness choosing TAP::Formatter::File for output if > output is not to a TTY. TAP::Formatter::File does not output color. IMO I > don't see why it shouldn't, if the user explicitly asked for color give them > color. That would be a matter of moving _set_colors, _output_success and > _failure_output from TAP::Formatter::Console up into TAP::Formatter::Base so > all formatters have it available.

I think this can be easily solved by continuing to use TAP::Formatter::Console (rather than switching to TAP::Formatter::File) if the user asks for color. This is a two line patch in TAP::Harness (plus comments).

Subject:

tap-harness-color-pipe.patch

diff --git a/lib/TAP/Harness.pm b/lib/TAP/Harness.pm index 9564630..b3df99d 100644 --- a/lib/TAP/Harness.pm +++ b/lib/TAP/Harness.pm @@ -418,8 +418,12 @@ Any keys for which the value is C<undef> will be ignored. $self->jobs(1) unless defined $self->jobs; + # Switch to TAP::Formatter::File if either HARNESS_NOTTY is set, or if + # STDOUT is not connect to a TTY and the user did not explicitly ask + # for color + my $stdout_is_tty = -t ( $arg_for{stdout} || \*STDOUT ); local $default_class{formatter_class} = 'TAP::Formatter::File' - unless -t ( $arg_for{stdout} || \*STDOUT ) && !$ENV{HARNESS_NOTTY}; + unless ( $stdout_is_tty || $arg_for{color} ) && !$ENV{HARNESS_NOTTY}; while ( my ( $attr, $class ) = each %default_class ) { $self->$attr( $self->$attr() || $class );