It would be quite beneficial if dispatch-conf and etc-update used colours; it's very hard (especially with the former) to see exactly where one file ends and another begins. Even just one different colour for the headers would be great.
Created attachment 44011 [details, diff] Patch to add colors to '#) file' lines in etc-update I use this patch to make it easier to see what files etc-update lists. No fancy commandlines, just color, 'NOCOLOR=1 etc-update' will turn off color. Probably should go into /etc/etc-update.conf...
Created attachment 44012 [details] Once more, this time binary so it can be used... adds colors to etc-update (now patch should work)
AFAIK, you can already use colors in dispatch-conf by using colordiff (available in portage) instead of the regular diff. Here's a snippet of my config file : diff="colordiff -Nu %s %s"
Thanks, I'll check that out but I was talking about colouring the dispatch-conf parts of the program, namely the headers before the diffs.
Created attachment 47702 [details, diff] etc-update-coloured.diff I agree, but I think a more comprehensive visual revamp would be useful. I've made an attempt at one for etc-update (attached), in which I've added colours, changed the formatting and hopefully made the messages a bit clearer.
I tried colordiff with dispatch-conf but it broke it...
Putting a hold on feature requests for portage as they are drowning out the bugs. Most of these features should be available in the next major version of portage. But for the time being, they are just drowning out the major bugs and delaying the next version's progress. Any bugs that contain patches and any bugs for etc-update or dispatch-conf can be reopened. Sorry, I'm just not good enough with bugzilla. ;)
Reopening for consideration.
I think its a good idea to have these colours(colors) in etc-update. As suggested by others there are alternative ways to do this, but having it in the default configuration would be beneficial in my opinion :-) Cheers -Rob
> As suggested by others there are alternative ways to do this, but having it in > the default configuration would be beneficial in my opinion :-) It really breaks the whole UNIX philosophy thing though. colordiff already provides this exact functionality and does so in a manner more in line with the do one thing and do it very well principle. Please do not add direct color support.
For what it's worth, I've been using colordiff with dispatch-conf for years and it works just fine.
(In reply to comment #0) > It would be quite beneficial if dispatch-conf and etc-update used colours; it's > very hard (especially with the former) to see exactly where one file ends and > another begins. Even just one different colour for the headers would be great. This sounds like the same issue as bug 142508. Am I correct? If so, it's already fixed for dispatch-conf by clearing the screen here: http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=commit;h=cecf7ccc10fbbeeaa8c9f72b359fd0a561d3bbbd Looking at the current version of etc-update, I don't see any "clear" calls, so maybe we need to do the same thing there.
I've added some "clear" calls to wipe the terminal, similar to the solution from bug 142508: http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=commit;h=5cfba96ca932266c7b50c9e432f13dd858e031db If anybody still wants the color patch, please rebase on the latest version in git.
Just to provide another solution I've been using recently that's fun, "git diff" can take file arguments without them being in git repos, which if used here provides nice coloring by default (and I'd guess that more people have "git" installed already than have "colordiff"): diff="git diff '%s' '%s'"
Let's keep it UNIX, like jieryn said.
