Enable console colours under Azure Pipelines

[blairconrad]

Under Bullseye 2.2.0, on Azure pipelines, the build output is not coloured, instead displaying the ANSI escape codes:

(from https://dev.azure.com/blairconrad/SendComics/_build/results?buildId=9&view=logs)

I'd offer to help, but I am not sure where to start!

[adamralph]

Hi @blairconrad! Unfortunately I suspect there is little that can be done about this. Either a console supports ANSI colouring or it doesn't. You may find that the best course of action is to switch off colouring with the --no-color option.

Out of interest, can you try re-running it with the --verbose option? When running on Windows, Bullseye attempts to switch on ANSI colouring using the Win32 API. The verbose output might give us some insight into why that fails in this environment.

[blairconrad]

Ah, thanks, @adamralph. I should've thought about the need for ANSI support. I built with --verbose:

2018-11-17T17:20:50.1410759Z Bullseye: Got a handle to the standard output device (GetStdHandle): 2164
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1413863Z Bullseye: Failed to get the current output mode of the console screen buffer (GetConsoleMode). Error code: 6
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1471639Z �[36mBullseye�[37m: �[0m�[90mVersion: 2.2.0+2fee2d5f074ee03dea3b0a899551c2da0dd1480d
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1490203Z �[36mBullseye�[37m: �[0m�[90mHost: Unknown
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1490465Z �[36mBullseye�[37m: �[0m�[90mOS: Windows
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1490824Z �[36mBullseye�[37m: �[0m�[90mArgs: --verbose
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1566686Z �[36mBullseye�[37m: �[0m�[37mStarting...�[97m (default)�[0m
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1732460Z �[36mBullseye�[37m/�[36mdefault�[37m: �[0m�[90mWalking dependencies...
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1732867Z �[36mBullseye�[37m/�[36mdefault�[37m/�[36mtest�[37m: �[0m�[90mWalking dependencies...
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1733134Z �[36mBullseye�[37m/�[36mdefault�[37m/�[36mtest�[37m/�[36mbuild�[37m: �[0m�[90mWalking dependencies...
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1733380Z �[36mBullseye�[37m/�[36mdefault�[37m/�[36mtest�[37m/�[36mbuild�[37m: �[0m�[90mAwaiting...
2018-11-17T17:20:50.1776379Z �[36mBullseye�[37m/�[36mbuild�[37m: �[0m�[37mStarting...�[0m

Seems the handle is invalid. Not that surprising, I suppose. There is a defunct UserVoice request for this feature. I can take a peek and see where we request these features now.

[blairconrad]

Ah. There's an existing issue. Took some searching. microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent#1569

[adamralph]

Seems the handle is invalid. Not that surprising, I suppose.

Yeah, I don't think this works on build servers at all. I was more just curious to see the logs. It fails on Appveyor too but Appveyor respects the ANSI codes, so it's fine.

I guess you just need to wait for that issue to be fixed, and perhaps consider the --no-color option in the meantime.

[adamralph]

Perhaps this could go into an FAQ.

[blairconrad]

Yeah, I'll probably turn on --no-color. I've also checked out the azure-pipelines-agent, in case I can see an easy way to fix it. (I've low hopes.)

Thanks for your time!

[adamralph]

Closing in favour of microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent#1569.

[adamralph]

@blairconrad now that microsoft/azure-pipelines-agent#1569 has been released, it would be interested to see how your build looks.

[blairconrad]

But I've been logged out for over 5 minutes! How will I know?
But seriously, I will push something soonish.

[blairconrad]

It is more better! Not quite what I expected, but tonnes more readable. I am a content person.

https://dev.azure.com/blairconrad/SendComics/_build/results?buildId=14

Thanks!

[adamralph]

Definitely an improvement. If I'm not too lazy, I may introduce an optimised palette for Azure Piplines.

[blairconrad]

Like the one you can see at https://dev.azure.com/blairconrad/blair%20bullseye/_build/results?buildId=18?

(Ignore the bonus environment variables at the top.)

PR coming soon! Would you want me to add a azure-pipelines.yml for the smoke tests?

[blairconrad]

Whoops. I meant to start a PR to my own repo and sent it to yours. #199. Carrying on!

[tlian]

Where is this setting to turn off coloring (i.e. --no-color option)?

[adamralph]

@tlian if you follow the quick start you will see it when you run dotnet run -- --help:

 -N, --no-color             Disable colored output

You can specify it like so:

dotnet run -- --no-color`

or

dotnet run -- -N