cgdb shows escape sequence fragments instead of colors in gdb terminal

[Horst Schirmeier]

When running cgdb 0.6.7-2build5 in a Konsole (on Ubuntu 19.04 amd64), it shows colored text in the source-code window, but the gdb window displays something that looks like ANSI escape sequence fragments. This is the
output of the source-code window after running `cgdb a.out`:

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Type "show copying" and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
[...]
For help, type "help".
Type "apropos word" to search for commands related to "word"...
Reading symbols from [32ma.out[m...
(gdb) b main
Breakpoint 1 at [34m0x117e[m: file [32mvptr.cc[m, line 20.
(gdb)

expected output: Colored text, saying e.g. "Reading symbols from a.out..."

TERM is xterm-256color, however `TERM=xterm cgdb a.out` exhibits the same behavior. This also happens inside tmux or screen.

[Horst Schirmeier (horst)]

Note that this works fine on Debian 10 (cgdb 0.6.7-2+b4).

[Horst Schirmeier (horst)]

Further investigation reveals that this is actually an upstream cgdb 0.6.7 deficiency. Newer GDBs do output coloring, which cgdb can deal with starting with version 0.7.0. In other words, when Ubuntu moved to a newer GDB version, it should also have bumped cgdb to 0.7.0 or newer.

Possible workarounds:

 - Disable GDB colors when running cgdb:
    cgdb -ex 'set style enabled off' a.out
    (probably use a bash alias cgdb="cgdb -ex 'set style enabled off'")

    GDB still uses colors while it starts up, but doesn't during use.

 - Disable GDB colors permanently: add "set style enabled off" to ~/.gdbinit

For a proper fix, Ubuntu should switch to cgdb 0.7.0 or newer. See also bug #1826319.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Horst Schirmeier (horst)]

Still broken in Ubuntu 19.10 (eoan) and the yet unreleased 20.04 (focal).