Add support for opting out of ANSI coloring via NO_COLOR env. variable

[augustoproiete]

Cake is able to detect if ANSI coloring is supported in a number of cases, but once it detects that color is supported, there's no way of opting out of it at the moment.

Some ideas:

• Check for the existence of an environment variable (NO_COLOR seems to be a standard) to opt out of ANSI coloring
• Add a new command-line switch e.g. --no-color and/or --color=false to opt out of ANSI coloring

---

Common options used to determine if ANSI coloring should be disabled used by some apps on GitHub:

• Command-line arguments:

  • --no-color
  • --no-colors
  • --color=false
  • --color=never

• Environment variables:

  • TERM=dumb
  • FORCE_COLOR=false
  • FORCE_COLOR=0

[pascalberger]

Configuration should IMHO be possible as other configuration options through environment variable, configuration file and argument.

@patriksvensson Is this something which should be done in Spectre.CLI?

[patriksvensson]

@pascalberger Makes sense to respect NO_COLOR since that's a pretty common convention. Other than that, the rest could be done in Cake.

[augustoproiete]

Sounds good.

For the configuration options, I suggest adding a new configuration value under Settings called Color, which can be one of the following values:

• auto - Let AnsiDetector decide if color is supported or not based on environment (default)
• never - opt out of coloring, regardless of environment (skip the logic to detect if color is supported or not)
• always - opt in on coloring, regardless of environment (skip the logic to detect if color is supported or not)

The color option would be available as ...

• An argument passed into Cake: --settings_color <value>
• A configuration file value: Color=value (under the Settings section)
• An environment variable: CAKE_SETTINGS_COLOR=value

... and follow the same priority order as other configuration values.

---

As for NO_COLOR I'm thinking this would be an exception to the prioritization rule for environment variables, in the sense that it overrides the Color setting even if defined in the configuration file or passed in as a command-line argument. What do you guys think?

[augustoproiete]

The scope of this issue was reduced to the NO_COLOR env. variable which was implemented via #2998 and will be released with Cake v1.1.0.

The second part (command-line switch & config optipn) is being tracked via #3138 for a future release

[cake-build-bot]

🎉 This issue has been resolved in version v1.1.0 🎉

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