Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 15 Aug 2018 12:55:02 -0700 (PDT)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net>
To:        Kyle Evans <kevans@freebsd.org>
Cc:        "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@freebsd.org>, Adam Weinberger <adamw@adamw.org>, svn-src-stable@freebsd.org, svn-src-all@freebsd.org, src-committers <src-committers@freebsd.org>, Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org>, svn-src-stable-11@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r337826 - stable/11/bin/ls
Message-ID:  <201808151955.w7FJt2Bk049460@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net>
In-Reply-To: <CACNAnaHUy5e7tVNXz-So9_Hd2NnDYFrOJQoORsOP4qungJ5gaA@mail.gmail.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 2:34 PM, Rodney W. Grimes
> <freebsd@pdx.rh.cn85.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
> > [ Charset UTF-8 unsupported, converting... ]
> >> On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 12:43 PM, Rodney W. Grimes
> >> <freebsd@pdx.rh.cn85.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > From the Linux man page at: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ls.1.html
> >> >
> >> >        Using color to distinguish file types is disabled both by default and
> >> >        with --color=never.  With --color=auto, ls emits color codes only
> >> >        when standard output is connected to a terminal.  The LS_COLORS
> >> >        environment variable can change the settings.  Use the dircolors
> >> >        command to set it.
> >> >
> >> > Um, so by default we should not be doing any colour... and we are...
> >> >
> >>
> >> I don't recall making any argument that we're trying to match GNU
> >> ls(1) behavior. Furthermore, again, we aren't doing any color by
> >> default- only when the COLORTERM environment variable is set.
> >
> > So we are intentially being different?
> >
> 
> No, we are not intentionally being different. See: the next paragraph,
> where I described that we've now-historically been honoring an
> environment variable for this and have simply added a more standard
> name for this variable.

And one that is set by default many more places than the one that
had been set before, changing behavior people have been seeing for
a long time, and some of those people did not expect that,
nor seem to want it either.

> 
> >>
> >> ls(1) on FreeBSD historically honors -an- environment variable for
> >> enabling color.
> >
> > Short history, long history it had no color support at all.
> 
> Color support in ls(1) is now old enough to drink having been
> introduced in 2000- I think that's long enough to call it
> "historically" here in 2018.

ok, but for 25 years that ls has output in b&w even in
a colour terminal unless I took action to make it color output.

> >> This environment variable is CLICOLOR. This commit
> >> switched the environment variable honored to the more-standard
> >> COLORTERM that is honored in other software and set by terminals that
> >> are generally expected to be used with color.
> >>
> >> I'm writing an UPDATING entry for this now to notify these users that
> >> they should remove COLORTERM from their environment if they do not, in
> >> fact, want a colored terminal.
> >
> > Is that the only way to turn this off?
> > That may not be desired either.
> > Atleast GNU ls allows me to force it off on command invocation
> > with --color=never, do we have an equivelent?
> >
> 
> Sure- it gets turned off the same way it got turned on. =)

Well, it now gets turned on when it was not turned on before,
and as is I now have to completly decolor to decolor ls(1),
I have no easy knob to turn off colorls only.

> I'm
> certainly not averse to adding a --color long option, and will do so
> when I find the time (later today, most likely).

That would help, atleast the annoyed can alias ls ls --color=never.

NB: from the GNU ls documentation there is a significant performance
impact with having colorls turned on as you now have to stat every
file in a directory listing.  Is this also true of the BSD colorls?

> Thanks,
> Kyle Evans

-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes@freebsd.org



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?201808151955.w7FJt2Bk049460>