how to set a environment variable for bat

[smartding]

telescope and fzf.vim have the same problem when using bat for previewing: the color in preview looks more saturated than running bat directly in command line. See this issue in fzf.vim repo for screenshots from many users.

The short term solution (as discussed here ) is to set the environment variable COLORTERM=truecolor each time we run bat. How can we do this in telescope?

[smartding]

I tried setting the COLORTERM environment variable as follows in previewers.lua, but no luck.

    local term_opts = {
      cwd = opts.cwd or vim.fn.getcwd(),
      env = {
        COLORTERM = 'truecolor'
      }
    }

    with_preview_window(status, bufnr, function()
      set_term_id(
        self,
        vim.fn.termopen(opts.get_command(entry, status), term_opts)
      )
    end)

[tjdevries]

Hmmm, env didn't work? That's what my suggested solution would have been.

Make sure you completely reload the plugin in between to ensure that env is getting passed.

[smartding]

I restarted neovim several times, so telescope is definitely reloaded.
I'm using the gruvbox theme in neovim and bat, with alacrity terminal (which can handle truecolor)
After setting COLORTERM with env, here's what it's like in neovim:

And here is what it's like in telescope's bat preview, the color is obviously wrong:

And if I run bat in terminal, the color is correct.

[kkharji]

I can confirm having the same issue with bat, perhaps it is something todo with bat, please check sharkdp/bat#979

[smartding]

I can confirm having the same issue with bat, perhaps it is something todo with bat, please check sharkdp/bat#979

bat needs external help to decide whether to use truecolor or not.
The current solution is to set the COLORTERM env variable, which works for previews in fzf.vim, but for some reason doesn't work with telescope. The bat community is also talking about adding a flag such as --color-mode=24-bit to force bat to use true color.

[ThomasFeher]

Why is Neovim removing COLORTERM from the environment in the first place? I'm
using a patched version that does not remove COLORTERM, as suggested by me
here.
That fixes the issue for fzf and for telescope.nvim and it doesn't seem to break
anything in my case (using Alacritty and Tmux on Linux).

Should I open a PR for that patch?

[kkharji]

Ohhh thats why, sure @ThomasFeher

[Conni2461]

I don't know what the neovim core guys want so i don't know if you should open a PR.
The underlining issue is that we can't set an env with termopen. This is a neovim bug with issue neovim/neovim#11751 and PR neovim/neovim#12937
But i have an idea how to fix this issue here. I would provide you with a config value like set_env({ 'COLORTERM=truecolor' }).
But i have a meeting now so i can implement it in like 2 hours or so :)
I will ping you in the PR.

[kkharji]

@Conni2461 coming to the rescue 😆 appreciate you bro

[Conni2461]

Please checkout #260 and report back if it is working for you. Thanks :)

[smartding]

Please checkout #260 and report back if it is working for you. Thanks :)

I tested bat preview with builtin git_files and buffer, it works!
Nice work :)

[Conni2461]

@tami5 can we keep issues around until the pr is merged? Maybe someone will have the same issue in the future and only does an open issue search, this way he can't find that this issue is already been worked on and has a working solution :)

[kkharji]

@Conni2461 ohhh sorry I thought its merged. I can create FAQ entry

[smartding]

@Conni2461 ohhh sorry I thought its merged. I can create FAQ entry

I was waiting for #260 to be merged, suddenly the issue gets closed.... :)

[kkharji]

@smartding ohhh sorry for shocking you 🤣 . if you want to test it now and assure us it is working okay you can do git fetch origin pull/260/head:previewer_fixes then git switch previewer_fixes

[smartding]

@smartding ohhh sorry for shocking you . if you want to test it now and assure us it is working okay you can do git fetch origin pull/260/head:previewer_fixes then git switch previewer_fixes

already tested the PR 21 hours ago and it worked, as I mentioned above.
I was just waiting to test the merged version in case there's any change.

[kkharji]

Oh so thats why I closed it. :D I was like hmm this issue if fixed for me and for smartding, let me close it, silly me :P

[smartding]

neovim is no longer resetting COLORTERM, thanks to the change made by @ThomasFeher.
I did some testing, there's no need to set_env = { ['COLORTERM'] = 'truecolor' } in telescope's setup now.