[REQUEST] Increase default terminal width in GitHub Actions

[samuelcolvin]

Have you checked the issues for a similar suggestions?

yes

How would you improve Rich?

Currently the terminal width is very narrow in github actions, making content, particuarly in tables hard to read, or missing completely.

Example: https://github.com/pydantic/pydantic-core/actions/runs/3933397938/jobs/6727055614

Would be great if rich could detect that it's being used in github actions and use a wider default width.

---

Otherwise/until this is changed, is there a env var I can see to increase the default?

[github-actions]

Thank you for your issue. Give us a little time to review it.

PS. You might want to check the FAQ if you haven't done so already.

This is an automated reply, generated by FAQtory

[samuelcolvin]

(Comes from use of rich via pytest-pretty)

[willmcgugan]

You can set the COLUMNS env var. There’s no other way for Rich to detect the width when not writing to a real tty

[samuelcolvin]

I understand you can't detect the width, but you could detect with a high detect of confidence that you're in a github action, and increase the default width?

[willmcgugan]

Increase it to what though? There’s no optional width for everyone. Any value I pick will be wrong for someone. And if I go down road route I’ll soon have a load of spaghetti logic to try and detect what CI system is in use.

I think think is best left to the user. Columns being a standard env var that might already be set.

[samuelcolvin]

I get that, but I think github actions is so widely used that something like

# GitHub Actions is extremely widely used, so we make an exception for it
# and increase the default terminal width
if os.getenv('GITHUB_ACTION'):
    default_columns = 120
else:
    default_columns = ...

Wouldn't be too crazy.

But I also understand if you don't want to.

---

For anyone else coming to this, adding the following the to the top level of your workflow file helps rich and also appears to help pytest.

env:
  COLUMNS: 120

[github-actions]

I hope we solved your problem.

If you like using Rich, you might also enjoy Textual