colorlog shouldn't call colorama.init() implicitely

[The-Compiler]

Since the contributions by @nicoddemus colorlog calls colorama.init() automatically when being imported.

I think this is wrong. Importing a module shouldn't mangle my sys.stderr/sys.stdout in any way without asking me to (and with no way to prevent it, other than calling colorama.deinit() by hand after importing).

If an user wants to use colorama, they should do this explicitely, not by importing colorlog.

For me, this broke code testing if sys.stderr is None because it then was a colorama-wrapped None, which was totally unexpected.

If you really insist on integrating colorama with colorlog, at least there should be a colorlog.init(). Explicit is better than implicit.

[borntyping]

Hmm. Can you give an usage example for colorlog where sys.stderr would be None?

[The-Compiler]

Yes, when executing a .pyw or a frozen GUI executable on Windows (which shouldn't open a terminal window).

It's also described in the Python documentation:

Note: Under some conditions stdin, stdout and stderr as well as the original values stdin, stdout and stderr can be None. It is usually the case for Windows GUI apps that aren’t connected to a console and Python apps started with pythonw.

However that's not even my point - a module should never do things like replacing my stdout at import time. I use colorlog on Windows with colorama, and have a custom handler which writes to a colorama-wrapped stream, with my stdout/stderr being untouched.

[borntyping]

colorama.init() is called at import time becuase that makes things much simpler/easier for users, with the aim being that code written on Linux using this library can be run just the same on Windows without having to add code. Practicality beats purity.

I think the patch you've submitted for colorama is a much better solution to this problem, making colorama.init() much safer to call.

[nicoddemus]

I agree with @borntyping, because colorama's documentation recommends calling colorama.init() so it seems to me that it should be fixed there (either not recommending that anymore, or making it safe to call as in the proposed patch).

My 2 cents. 😄