Disable color codes in CLI output

[thomascube]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

We're running ggshield in a shell environment where color codes are not supported. The output is collected in a log file and when viewing that file the output is hard to read. See the example below.

Describe the solution you'd like

An option to enable/disable colored output (e.g. --no-colors) or an according environment variable would be helpful to disable colors where not desired.

Additional context

This is how the output looks in our environment:

[ggshield-scan - scan]  �[93m�[22m�[22m
[ggshield-scan - scan]  commit 120xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[ggshield-scan - scan]  �[0mAuthor: xxxxxxx <some.one@example.com>
[ggshield-scan - scan]  Date: Mon Mar 4 12:20:57 2024 +0100
[ggshield-scan - scan] 
[ggshield-scan - scan]  �[36m�[22m�[22m>�[0m �[93m�[1m�[22mcommit://670ee851eb490c9af1b9ddc54f6a646277bcb9d4/charts/test-chart/values.yaml�[0m: 1 incident detected
[ggshield-scan - scan] 
[ggshield-scan - scan]  �[36m�[22m�[22m>>�[0m Secret detected: �[93m�[1m�[22mMicrosoft Teams webhook�[0m
[ggshield-scan - scan]     Validity: �[93m�[1m�[22mValid�[0m
[ggshield-scan - scan]     Occurrences: �[93m�[1m�[22m1�[0m
[ggshield-scan - scan]     Known by GitGuardian dashboard: YES
[ggshield-scan - scan]     Incident URL: https://ccccccccccccc
[ggshield-scan - scan]     Secret SHA: �[93m�[1m�[22mba1b5876828384cd247fcada027883ed01a05fe10e03afc13ce97d0f6544f568�[0m
[ggshield-scan - scan] 
[ggshield-scan - scan]  �[37m�[22m�[2m  �[0m �[37m�[22m�[2m83�[0m | �[37m�[22m�[22m�[0m
[ggshield-scan - scan]  �[37m�[22m�[2m  �[0m �[37m�[22m�[2m84�[0m | �[37m�[22m�[22mhoneypot:�[0m
[ggshield-scan - scan]  �[33m�[22m�[22m  �[0m �[33m�[22m�[22m85�[0m | �[37m�[22m�[22m…_WEBHOOK: �[0m�[91m�[22m�[22mhttps://xxxxxx.webhook.office.com/we****************-****-****-****-*********************-****-****-****-***********************************************************9c6ea-782f-4fcf-a099-bea8471a6177�[0m�[37m�[22m�[22m"…�[0m
[ggshield-scan - scan]          �[93m�[1m�[22m           �[93m�[1m�[22m�[0m
[ggshield-scan - scan]  �[0m

[thomascube]

Although not documented (or I wasn't able to find it) but setting the NO_COLOR env var does the trick. You can therefore close the issue but adding this to the documentation would maybe help others.

[agateau-gg]

Hi, thanks for your feedback.

NO_COLOR is indeed not documented. I am going to file an issue against our doc to fix this.

Right now ggshield disables color when the output is redirected to a file, unless it recognizes it's running in a CI with color support. This needs to be changed so that color is not enabled when redirected to a file even if it's running in a CI with color support.