[feature] Don't add escape sequences to stdout of (some) query commands, regardless of CLICOLOR_FORCE

[BobIsOnFire]

What is your suggestion?

Hi!

My use case: I am running various conan commands in a wrapper script. The wrapper is using its own buffering when running subprocesses, so when I run the script in the terminal, conan doesn't know that it actually runs in terminal, and disables colors in logs. I set CLICOLOR_FORCE env variable when I want to see colored logs, which works nicely for me.

Sadly, when I want to capture stdout of a command and do something with it, CLICOLOR_FORCE adds unwanted escape sequences and breaks my script:

$ conan list 'zlib/*' --format=json | cat -A
{$
    "Local Cache": {$
        "zlib/1.2.13": {}$
    }$
}$
$ CLICOLOR_FORCE=1 conan list 'zlib/*' --format=json | cat -A
{$
    "Local Cache": {$
        "zlib/1.2.13": {}$
    }$
}^[[0m$

Same can be observed if I run simple conan config home. This is kinda expected since I add a variable to force colors, but JSON output format is meant to be processed automatically, so I think it shouldn't be touched with color decorations at all.

Have you read the CONTRIBUTING guide?

• I've read the CONTRIBUTING guide

[BobIsOnFire]

It could make sense to add color decorators in cli_out_write only when either fg or bg is not None, this would be enough for my use case. I can prepare a PR myself if it is OK with you!

[memsharded]

Hi @BobIsOnFire

Thanks for the report and the investigation.

I agree, when printing to stdout any json it shouldn't use any escape sequences at all, irrespective of all colors enabled or forced. It makes sense to fix cli_out_write() method so this doesn't happen. It would also make sense to use print() or sys.stdout.write() for many outputs like json files that don't use colors, but probably fix cli_out_write() will be simpler. Thanks for offering to submit a PR!