Support NO_HYPERLINKS/FORCE_HYPERLINKS environment variables

[mgedmin]

Rich already supports NO_COLOR/FORCE_COLOR environment variables, which is very nice. Currently these also affect hyperlinks.

I would like Rich to also support NO_HYPERLINKS/FORCE_HYPERLINKS, as specified by https://no-hyperlinks.org.

My reason: there are situations where I want color but don't want hyperlinks. Specifically, the very nice Unix watch utility supports color, but does not support hyperlinks. If I run

watch 'my-script-that-produces-lots-of-output | tail -n $((LINES-2))'

to see the tail end of my nicely formatted script output, I lose color. I can do

watch -c 'FORCE_COLOR=1 my-script-that-produces-lots-of-output | tail -n $((LINES-2))'

but watch mishandles OSC 8 and fills my screen with ]8;id=1234567;https://example.com\link text]8;;\.

Being able to

watch -c 'NO_HYPERLINKS=1 FORCE_COLOR=1 my-script-that-produces-lots-of-output | tail -n $((LINES-2))'

would solve this until procps (and, apparently, ncurses) add support for OSC 8.

[artur282]

Worth knowing before implementing this: NO_COLOR does not currently suppress hyperlinks, so today there is no env-var combination that gives "colour but no OSC 8" — the coupling is the other way around.

What the code actually does (rich 15.0.0, main @ 9d8f9a3)

• NO_COLOR → rich/console.py:725-729 sets self.no_color; Console._render_buffer (console.py:2138-2141) then applies Segment.remove_color(...), and Segment.remove_color (rich/segment.py:608-626) replaces each style with style.without_color, which copies _link unchanged (rich/style.py:489). Result: colour dropped, OSC 8 kept.
• FORCE_COLOR → rich/console.py:964 (Console.is_terminal), which decides whether a colour system exists at all. OSC 8 is emitted in exactly one place, rich/style.py:714-717:

        if self._link and not legacy_windows:
            rendered = (
                f"\x1b]8;id={self._link_id};{self._link}\x1b\\{rendered}\x1b]8;;\x1b\\"
            )

and Style.render returns early when color_system is None (style.py:710). So links ride on colour: you get "no colour, no links" (piped output without FORCE_COLOR) or "colour + links" (FORCE_COLOR=1), never "colour, no links".

• There is no hyperlinks= argument on Console. The only such flag in the package is Markdown(hyperlinks=...) (rich/markdown.py:555), which is what the CLI --hyperlinks maps to.

Reproduced with pip install rich==15.0.0, output piped through cat -v:

FORCE_COLOR='1' NO_HYPERLINKS='1'                                   # stock Console: OSC 8 emitted, NO_HYPERLINKS ignored
^[]8;id=15770934;https://example.com^[\^[[1;31mlink text^[[0m^[]8;;^[\
^[]8;id=15770937;https://example.com^[\^[[1mlink text^[[0m^[]8;;^[\  # Console(no_color=True): colour gone, OSC 8 kept
^[[1;31mlink text^[[0m                                              # Segment.strip_links path: colour kept, no OSC 8

Workaround that works today, using the primitive rich already has — Segment.strip_links (rich/segment.py:578-592), the same helper PagerContext(links=False) uses:

from rich.console import Console
from rich.segment import Segment

class NoLinkConsole(Console):
    def _render_buffer(self, buffer):
        return super()._render_buffer(Segment.strip_links(buffer))

With that Console in your script, watch -c 'FORCE_COLOR=1 my-script | tail -n $((LINES-2))' keeps colour and no longer feeds OSC 8 to watch. If you don't control the producing program, filter the stream instead (tested against the same 15.0.0 output — colour preserved, every OSC 8 open/close sequence removed):

# osc8strip.py
import re, sys
OSC8 = re.compile("\x1b]8;[^\x1b]*\x1b\\\\")
sys.stdout.write(OSC8.sub("", sys.stdin.read()))

$ FORCE_COLOR=1 my-script | python osc8strip.py | cat -v
^[[1;31mlink text^[[0m

Patch shape for the feature itself (mirrors the NO_COLOR handling, no new plumbing):

1. Console.__init__: add hyperlinks: Optional[bool] = None next to no_color (console.py:636), and

        self.hyperlinks = (
            hyperlinks
            if hyperlinks is not None
            else self._environ.get("NO_HYPERLINKS", "") == ""
            or "FORCE_HYPERLINKS" in self._environ
        )

2. Console._render_buffer (console.py:2138):

        if not self.hyperlinks:
            buffer = Segment.strip_links(buffer)

Use strip_links there and not remove_color, otherwise NO_HYPERLINKS would also drop SGR colour for users who set both — the fact that no_color deliberately preserves link (style.py:489) is what keeps the two switches independent.