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Mercurial colorizes output from several commands.
For example, the diff command shows additions in green and deletions in red, while the status command shows modified files in magenta. Many other commands have analogous colors. It is possible to customize these colors.
To enable color (default) whenever possible use:
[ui] color = yes
To disable color use:
[ui] color = no
See hg help config.ui.color for details.
Mercurial can use various systems to display color. The supported modes are ansi, win32, and terminfo. See hg help config.color for details about how to control the mode.
Other effects in addition to color, like bold and underlined text, are also available. By default, the terminfo database is used to find the terminal codes used to change color and effect. If terminfo is not available, then effects are rendered with the ECMA-48 SGR control function (aka ANSI escape codes).
The available effects in terminfo mode are 'blink', 'bold', 'dim', 'inverse', 'invisible', 'italic', 'standout', and 'underline'; in ECMA-48 mode, the options are 'bold', 'inverse', 'italic', and 'underline'. How each is rendered depends on the terminal emulator. Some may not be available for a given terminal type, and will be silently ignored.
If the terminfo entry for your terminal is missing codes for an effect or has the wrong codes, you can add or override those codes in your configuration:
[color] terminfo.dim = \E[2m
where 'E' is substituted with an escape character.
Text receives color effects depending on the labels that it has. Many default Mercurial commands emit labelled text. You can also define your own labels in templates using the label function, see hg help templates. A single portion of text may have more than one label. In that case, effects given to the last label will override any other effects. This includes the special "none" effect, which nullifies other effects.
Labels are normally invisible. In order to see these labels and their position in the text, use the global --color=debug option. The same anchor text may be associated to multiple labels, e.g.
[log.changeset changeset.secret|changeset: 22611:6f0a53c8f587]
The following are the default effects for some default labels. Default effects may be overridden from your configuration file:
[color] status.modified = blue bold underline red_background status.added = green bold status.removed = red bold blue_background status.deleted = cyan bold underline status.unknown = magenta bold underline status.ignored = black bold # 'none' turns off all effects status.clean = none status.copied = none qseries.applied = blue bold underline qseries.unapplied = black bold qseries.missing = red bold diff.diffline = bold diff.extended = cyan bold diff.file_a = red bold diff.file_b = green bold diff.hunk = magenta diff.deleted = red diff.inserted = green diff.changed = white diff.tab = diff.trailingwhitespace = bold red_background # Blank so it inherits the style of the surrounding label changeset.public = changeset.draft = changeset.secret = resolve.unresolved = red bold resolve.resolved = green bold bookmarks.active = green branches.active = none branches.closed = black bold branches.current = green branches.inactive = none tags.normal = green tags.local = black bold rebase.rebased = blue rebase.remaining = red bold shelve.age = cyan shelve.newest = green bold shelve.name = blue bold histedit.remaining = red bold
Because there are only eight standard colors, Mercurial allows you to define color names for other color slots which might be available for your terminal type, assuming terminfo mode. For instance:
color.brightblue = 12 color.pink = 207 color.orange = 202
to set 'brightblue' to color slot 12 (useful for 16 color terminals that have brighter colors defined in the upper eight) and, 'pink' and 'orange' to colors in 256-color xterm's default color cube. These defined colors may then be used as any of the pre-defined eight, including appending '_background' to set the background to that color.