Colorizing report output

[AlexBaranosky]

Seems like a good idea. I'm still wondering: What's a sane way to allow the user to opt-out of colorization?

[AlexBaranosky]

I've got a decent looking colorized version of the report code, cake summary and lein-plugin summary, but no way for the user to turn it on or off. I'm not sure if we need that feature, or if colors should just be the only option. I've got it on a local branch... Let me know what you think.

[AlexBaranosky]

Ideas based on IRC chat with Alan Malloy and Chris Granger, on the subject of how to best go about making the colorization togglable:

• Need to make colorization togglable so that you can (eg) write it to text files or devices that don't support ansi color... log files, etc.
• Is midje used outside of the context of lein? Yes, at least cake and Emacs midje-mode. Could let the user configure it in the project file.
• Ideally you would query the output pipe/console and ask if it supports color - that's what grep does. but that's probably a lot of work and might not be possible in java anyway.
• project.clj isn't very flexible though, right? maybe i usually want color but this time i'm writing to a log file?

• you might take a hint from lein and use an environment variable, like:

  MIDJE_COLOR=false

• you can then have the lein-midje plugin set it, ... based on the project var if it exists.
• otherwise, amalloy can write his log files by setting it explicitly at the start of the command :p

[AlexBaranosky]

The JVM does not have a simple way to set an environment variable. IT can read one, but can't set one (without a crazy hack).

Two options I can think of:

• use the crazy hack
• make Midje colorize by default, but have a environment variable that can turn colorization off, if someone needs to.

I plan to go with option 2. Let me know if it stinks. :)

[AlexBaranosky]

Pushed code to make FAIL lines red, and WORK TO DO lines yellow in the shell. This can be turned off by setting the environment variable MIDJE_COLORIZE=FALSE. Next to do is to edit the cake plugin code to make ">>> clojure.test summary:" and ">>> Midje summary:" both be green. (plan to make same change to lein-midje)