How can we preview colorized help text?

[twelvelabs]

I was excited to see the release notes for v6.3.0:

This release brings semantic colors to --help output by default ...

I updated and gave it a try and I'm not seeing anything different:

usage bash ./my-script-with-usage-comments.sh --help

I tried setting an explicit help_template value using the example in the MR:

# [USAGE] help_template "{$heading}My tool{/$}\n\n{{usage}}\n\n{$cyan}{{flags}}{/$}"

... and set various CLICOLOR env vars - still no changes. Does anyone know how to get it to work?

I'm particularly interested in getting my mise tasks to show colorized help text, but I'm assuming that will require mise to be updated to use the latest version of usage-lib. Just interested in getting a preview.

[jdx]

Thanks for reporting this — you found an implementation gap. The v6.3 colour support was active in the compiled usage-argv/usage-rs renderer, while usage bash and mise task help go through the plain usage-lib renderer. KDL style tags were validated there but then deliberately stripped, so neither TTY detection nor CLICOLOR_FORCE=1 could enable them. (CLICOLOR itself is not read; the supported overrides are CLICOLOR_FORCE and NO_COLOR.)

I opened #1309 to add a terminal-aware usage-lib renderer and use it for usage bash, usage exec, and the usage CLI own help. It keeps the existing plain API unchanged for generated docs and snapshots and adds parity tests against the compiled renderer.

Once that is merged and released, the command in this discussion will provide the preview you expected. Mise will also need to switch its task-help call to the new render_help_styled(..., Style::auto()) API; upgrading the dependency alone will not change its current plain-renderer call.

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[twelvelabs]

Verified in usage 6.8.0:

# Renders beautiful colorized help text.
usage bash mise-tasks/docker/build.sh --help

Thank you!

Still not seeing colorized help in mise, but that's a separate issue. I'll open a discussion over there.