'How to get colorized output with cmake?
I want to have message function in CMakeLists.txt
which output colorized text. Maybe an escape sequence.
For example:
message("\x1b[31m;This text must be in red")
It don't work. I got:
Syntax error in cmake code at /home/taurus/cmakecolor/CMakeLists.txt:1 when parsing string \x1b[31m;This text must be in red Invalid escape sequence \x
Solution 1:[1]
To extend @grim's correct answer, you can make things a bit more convenient by setting up variables to handle the various colours:
if(NOT WIN32)
string(ASCII 27 Esc)
set(ColourReset "${Esc}[m")
set(ColourBold "${Esc}[1m")
set(Red "${Esc}[31m")
set(Green "${Esc}[32m")
set(Yellow "${Esc}[33m")
set(Blue "${Esc}[34m")
set(Magenta "${Esc}[35m")
set(Cyan "${Esc}[36m")
set(White "${Esc}[37m")
set(BoldRed "${Esc}[1;31m")
set(BoldGreen "${Esc}[1;32m")
set(BoldYellow "${Esc}[1;33m")
set(BoldBlue "${Esc}[1;34m")
set(BoldMagenta "${Esc}[1;35m")
set(BoldCyan "${Esc}[1;36m")
set(BoldWhite "${Esc}[1;37m")
endif()
message("This is normal")
message("${Red}This is Red${ColourReset}")
message("${Green}This is Green${ColourReset}")
message("${Yellow}This is Yellow${ColourReset}")
message("${Blue}This is Blue${ColourReset}")
message("${Magenta}This is Magenta${ColourReset}")
message("${Cyan}This is Cyan${ColourReset}")
message("${White}This is White${ColourReset}")
message("${BoldRed}This is BoldRed${ColourReset}")
message("${BoldGreen}This is BoldGreen${ColourReset}")
message("${BoldYellow}This is BoldYellow${ColourReset}")
message("${BoldBlue}This is BoldBlue${ColourReset}")
message("${BoldMagenta}This is BoldMagenta${ColourReset}")
message("${BoldCyan}This is BoldCyan${ColourReset}")
message("${BoldWhite}This is BoldWhite\n\n${ColourReset}")
If you really fancy pushing the boat out, you can replace the built-in message
function with your own which colourises the output depending on the message type:
function(message)
list(GET ARGV 0 MessageType)
if(MessageType STREQUAL FATAL_ERROR OR MessageType STREQUAL SEND_ERROR)
list(REMOVE_AT ARGV 0)
_message(${MessageType} "${BoldRed}${ARGV}${ColourReset}")
elseif(MessageType STREQUAL WARNING)
list(REMOVE_AT ARGV 0)
_message(${MessageType} "${BoldYellow}${ARGV}${ColourReset}")
elseif(MessageType STREQUAL AUTHOR_WARNING)
list(REMOVE_AT ARGV 0)
_message(${MessageType} "${BoldCyan}${ARGV}${ColourReset}")
elseif(MessageType STREQUAL STATUS)
list(REMOVE_AT ARGV 0)
_message(${MessageType} "${Green}${ARGV}${ColourReset}")
else()
_message("${ARGV}")
endif()
endfunction()
message("No colour at all.")
message(STATUS "\"Colour\" is spelled correctly.")
message(AUTHOR_WARNING "\"Color\" is misspelled.")
message(WARNING "Final warning: spell \"color\" correctly.")
message(SEND_ERROR "Game over. It's \"colour\", not \"color\".")
message(FATAL_ERROR "And there's no \"z\" in \"colourise\" either.")
I can't say that I recommend overriding the built-in message
function in this way, but having said that, I've not found any major problems with doing this either.
Solution 2:[2]
A simpler solution is probably just to use CMake's built-in capability for emitting coloured output, i.e. these commands
Different colors
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --normal hello
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --black hello
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --red hello
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --green hello
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --yellow hello
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --blue hello
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --magenta hello
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --cyan hello
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --white hello
Bold text
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --red --bold hello
No new line
cmake -E cmake_echo_color --red --no-newline hello
From CMake you can use the execute_process()
command to invoke ${CMAKE_COMMAND}
. You could write a convenient function for doing this.
UPDATE: Using cmake_echo_color
with execute_process()
As pointed out by @sjm324 running
execute_process(COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E cmake_echo_color --red --bold hello)
does not work. Looking at the implementation https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/blob/10371cd6dcfc1bf601fa3e715734dbe66199e2e4/Source/kwsys/Terminal.c#L160
my guess is that standard output is not attached to the terminal and thus when CMake internally calls isatty()
this fails.
I have two hacks that workaround this but really if you care about this you should contact the CMake devs for a less fragile solution
HACK 1: Set CLICOLOR_FORCE=1
environment variable.
execute_process(COMMAND
${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E env CLICOLOR_FORCE=1
${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E cmake_echo_color --red --bold hello
)
This isn't a great idea. If you log the output of your build to a file it will have escape sequences in it because you're forcing them to be emitted always.
HACK 2: Set OUTPUT_FILE to be the TTY
Don't do this. HACK 1 is likely more portable.
execute_process(COMMAND
/usr/bin/tty
OUTPUT_VARIABLE TTY_NAME
OUTPUT_STRIP_TRAILING_WHITESPACE)
execute_process(COMMAND
${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E cmake_echo_color --red --bold hello
OUTPUT_FILE ${TTY_NAME})
Solution 3:[3]
While tedious, you can define a variable that contains an escape character and use it in your message strings
string(ASCII 27 ESCAPE)
message("${ESCAPE}[34mblue${ESCAPE}[0m")
Solution 4:[4]
Run execute_process and assign output to VARIBALE, then use the message to print.
No hack
macro ( print_color NAME )
print ( COLOR ${NAME} " ${NAME}" )
endmacro ()
function ( text )
cmake_parse_arguments ( PARSE_ARGV 0 "_TEXT" "BOLD" "COLOR" "" )
set ( _TEXT_OPTIONS -E cmake_echo_color --no-newline )
if ( _TEXT_COLOR )
string ( TOLOWER "${_TEXT_COLOR}" _TEXT_COLOR_LOWER )
if ( NOT ${_TEXT_COLOR_LOWER} MATCHES "^normal|black|red|green|yellow|blue|magenta|cyan|white" )
print ( "Only these colours are supported:" )
print_color ( NORMAL )
print_color ( BLACK )
print_color ( RED )
print_color ( GREEN )
print_color ( YELLOW )
print_color ( BLUE )
print_color ( MAGENTA )
print_color ( CYAN )
print_color ( WHITE )
TEXT ( WARING "Color ${_TEXT_COLOR} is not support." )
else ()
list ( APPEND _TEXT_OPTIONS --${_TEXT_COLOR_LOWER} )
endif ()
endif ()
if ( _TEXT_BOLD )
list ( APPEND _TEXT_OPTIONS --bold )
endif ()
execute_process ( COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E env CLICOLOR_FORCE=1 ${CMAKE_COMMAND} ${_TEXT_OPTIONS} ${_TEXT_UNPARSED_ARGUMENTS}
OUTPUT_VARIABLE _TEXT_RESULT
ECHO_ERROR_VARIABLE
)
set ( TEXT_RESULT ${_TEXT_RESULT} PARENT_SCOPE )
endfunction ()
unset ( print_color )
function ( print )
text ( ${ARGN} )
message ( ${TEXT_RESULT} )
endfunction ()
print ( COLOR NORMAL TEST_NORMAL )
print ( BOLD COLOR NORMAL TEST_NORMAL_BOLD )
print ( COLOR BLACK TEST_BLACK )
print ( BOLD COLOR BLACK TEST_BLACK_BOLD )
print ( COLOR RED TEST_RED )
print ( BOLD COLOR RED TEST_RED_BOLD )
print ( COLOR GREEN TEST_GREEN )
print ( BOLD COLOR GREEN TEST_GREEN_BOLD )
print ( COLOR YELLOW TEST_YELLOW )
print ( BOLD COLOR YELLOW TEST_YELLOW_BOLD )
print ( COLOR BLUE TEST_BLUE )
print ( BOLD COLOR BLUE TEST_BLUE_BOLD )
print ( COLOR MAGENTA TEST_MAGENTA )
print ( BOLD COLOR MAGENTA TEST_MAGENTA_BOLD )
print ( COLOR CYAN TEST_CYAN )
print ( BOLD COLOR CYAN TEST_CYAN_BOLD )
print ( COLOR WHITE TEST_WHITE )
print ( BOLD COLOR WHITE TEST_WHITE_BOLD )
<script src="https://gist.github.com/Invincibl-e/3a2dd433c338284cfe95f0d5a6153c06.js"></script>
Sources
This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Source: Stack Overflow
Solution | Source |
---|---|
Solution 1 | Fraser |
Solution 2 | |
Solution 3 | grim |
Solution 4 |