quilt diff passes output through a pager even with color options enabled

[Steve Beattie]

Since moving to precise, quilt diff passes output through a pager even though the color option is set. This results in the output containing garbage color control characters like so:

ESC[32mIndex: b/parser/libapparmor_re/expr-tree.ccESC[00m
===================================================================
ESC[32m--- a/parser/libapparmor_re/expr-tree.ccESC[00m
ESC[32m+++ b/parser/libapparmor_re/expr-tree.ccESC[00m
ESC[33m@@ -189,7 +189,7 @@ESC[00m ESC[35mvoid normalize_tree(Node *t, int dir)ESC[00m
        for (;;) {
                if ((&epsnode == t->child[dir]) &&
                    (&epsnode != t->child[!dir]) &&
ESC[35m- dynamic_cast<TwoChildNode *>(t)) {ESC[00m
ESC[36m+ !dynamic_cast<TwoChildNode *>(t->child[!dir])) {ESC[00m
                        // (E | a) -> (a | E)
                        // Ea -> aE
                        Node *c = t->child[dir]

To reproduce, do quilt diff --color=auto or add the following to your ~/.quiltrc:

  QUILT_DIFF_ARGS="--color=auto"

and do quilt diff.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: quilt 0.50-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-12.20-generic 3.2.2
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.91-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: 9c15077a0ca11678d04e060687c26674
CheckboxSystem: 5dc75472945f57d094b84e90feb97396
Date: Thu Feb 16 09:33:57 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110426)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: quilt
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-01-30 (17 days ago)

[Steve Beattie (sbeattie)]

A workaround is to set

  QUILT_PAGER=''

in the ~/.quiltrc. If it's unset, it falls back to $PAGER or less.

[Martin Quinson (mquinson)]

For the record, I just set the default pager to "less -R" when none is used (upstream and in debian package). That should make this PEBKAC harder to reach.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package quilt - 0.60-3

---------------
quilt (0.60-3) unstable; urgency=low

  * debian/control: specify the encoding to emacs at the file bottom,
    not the file top (Closes: #689554).
    This should help clumsy tools that get fooled when the control
    file begins with an empty paragraph, even if they should not break.
  * debian/control: Recommends less, as we use it in most commands
    (probably all but the raw push/pop ones). (LP: #1089601)
  * Add deb3 script to convert debian source package to new 3.0
    (quilt) format. Thanks to Osamu Aoki for that (Closes: #581186).
  * d/p/dep3mail: Allow mail subcommand to get the mail subject
    from dep3-formated patches, so that I can use it to report
    the changes done to quilt itself to my own upstream.
  * d/p/doc_search_of_patches: Document the fact that quilt searches
    for its `patches' directory in the same way that git searches for
    its configuration (Closes: #549482).
  * d/p/doc_exit_status: Document the exit status (Closes: #587001).
  * d/p/graph_depends_on_graphviz: Provide an informative message on
    'quilt graph' without graphviz being installed (Closes: #659944).
  * d/p/default_pager_less-R: Use 'less -R' as default pager (LP: #933617)

 -- Martin Quinson <email address hidden> Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:06:19 +0100