Color UI in the prompt

By default, Git has no colors when displaying information in the terminal. However, displaying colors is a feature of Git that is only a configuration away.

Getting ready

We'll use the cookbook-tips-tricks repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/dvaske/cookbook-tips-tricks.git
$ cd cookbook-tips-tricks

How to do it...

First, we'll edit and add foo:

$ echo "And another line" >> foo
$ git add foo

Change foo some more, but don't add it to the staging area:

$ echo "Last line ...so far" >> foo

Create a new file called test:

$ touch test

The git status command will show us the status:

$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)

    modified:   foo

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified:   foo

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    test

We can set the color.ui configuration to auto or true to get color in the UI when required:

$ git config --global color.ui true
$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)

    modified:   foo

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified:   foo

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

    test

There's more…

The color.ui configuration works with a long range of Git commands diff, log, and branch included. The following is an example of git log when setting color.ui to true:

$ git log --oneline --decorate --graph
* c111003 (HEAD, origin/master, origin/HEAD, master) Update foo and bar
* 270e97b Add bar
* 43fd490 Initial commit, adds foo
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