How to enable color output with Ninja

Usage
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1

Hi,

How can I enable color output when using the Ninja generator?

I have set CMAKE_COLOR_DIAGNOSTICS to ON and also tried adding the -fdiagnostics-color=always compiler option, but still, no color is displayed.

The color output works fine when I use the make generator. Is there a way to get colored output when using the Ninja generator?

2

Ninja buffers output, so tools are writing to a pipe, not directly to the terminal, so auto-detection may turn it off conservatively. Does make -Otarget still work (this does similar buffering)?

3

Yes, make -Otarget displays colored output when the project configured with Make.

So is it expected to get color with Ninja then?

4

I’m not sure…I’ve never used color diagnostics myself (NeoVim tends to re-color build output anyways AFAICT).