xmake-color-output

cprint, Color Tags & Disabling Color

cprint / cprintf are xmake's colored terminal printers. They look like print/printf but accept inline style tags:

cprint("${bright green}hello ${clear}xmake")

Available in any script-domain code: on_load, on_build, after_build, on_run, on_test, task bodies, external modules imported via import(). Not available in the description domain (top-level set_*/add_*) — use print there instead, and only for debugging.

Basic usage

cprint("hello")                       -- plain text, like print
cprint("${red}error")                 -- red text
cprint("${bright red}ERROR")          -- bold red
cprintf("%d errors\n", n)             -- printf-style
print("hello, %s", name)              -- plain print; no tags, no newline-less variant

Formatting uses string.format-style substitution. cprint adds a trailing newline; cprintf does not.

Tag syntax

Styles are wrapped in ${...} and apply to the rest of the line (or until ${clear}):

cprint("${red}hello ${clear}xmake")          -- only "hello " is red
cprint("${bright red underline onyellow}ALERT${clear}")

Multiple attributes are space-separated inside one ${...}.

Complete attribute list

Attributes:

Tag	Effect
reset / clear / default	reset all style
bright	bold / highlight
dim	dark / faint
underline	underline
blink	blinking text
reverse	swap fg/bg
hidden	invisible text

Foreground colors:

black  red  green  yellow  blue  magenta  cyan  white

Background colors (prefix on):

onblack  onred  ongreen  onyellow  onblue  onmagenta  oncyan  onwhite

Example:

cprint("${bright red underline onyellow}hello${clear}")
cprint("${dim cyan}note:${clear} did you mean ${bright yellow}--foo${clear}?")

24-bit true color

Since v2.1.7, if the terminal reports truecolor support xmake accepts RGB triples:

import("core.base.colors")
if colors.truecolor() then
    cprint("${255;0;0}red")                 -- foreground RGB
    cprint("${on;255;0;0}bg red${clear}")   -- background RGB
    cprint("${bright 255;0;0 underline}bold red underlined")
    cprint("${on;255;0;0 0;255;0}green-on-red${clear}")
end