On 13 April 2012 03:40, Joe Buck <joe.b...@synopsys.com> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 12:42:19AM +0200, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote: >> I would like to have color output. And since nobody is paying me to do >> this work, I'd rather work on what I would like to have. The question >> is whether this is something that GCC wants to have. >> >> If the answer is NO, that is fine, I will have more free time. > > I'm not interested in color output, and would turn it off if it were > implemented (the escape sequences would just mess things up when capturing > compiler output in log files).
My proposal is to follow grep, that is, --color=[never|auto|always]. With auto, color would only be printed when isatty() is true. The default could be auto, or never if some people are very much against it. > Clang is much smarter about identifying what the user probably meant when > the issue is a typo, or "." instead of "->" or vice versa. Getting GCC to > do at least as well in this area is a much better use of developers' time > than presenting a cascade of unintelligible messages resulting from > template expansion in full color. > > That said, you're free to work on what interests you. Yes, there is plenty of things that could be fixed in GCC. And I have fixed my fair share of bugs that don't actually affect me at all, for free, on my free time. I find the color output of Clang just beautiful and, in my opinion, color support in GCC would make it a bit more beautiful and attract new users, so it is a much better use of developer's time than fixing yet another obscure diagnostic issue that only triggers with a careful ad-hoc example. That said, I do really think you are free to work on what interests you, so I hope to see your patches fixing diagnostics issues soon. Cheers, Manuel.
