Colored comment text on GitHub

[SukkaW]

There are several ways to create colored text on GitHub: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/31570

Don't know if it is possible to transform ASCII color to a GitHub-supported format for better review (diff code block could be a good start?)

[eliheady]

Hi @SukkaW, this is an interesting idea.

Wrapping the output in ```diff ... ``` doesn't work well since the DNSControl output has a number before each changed record. It would partially work for providers that process changes in the whole zone or all records of each type at once, but the first line of output would not be colored since it won't start with + or -. I know that isn't quite what you're suggesting but I hoped it might be that easy.

Parsing the ANSI escape sequences to convert into a supported format seems like sort of a big project that could stand on its own. This action disables ANSI colors with the NO_COLOR environment variable and that could be changed if there was an easy to use filter to convert the colors.

[SukkaW]

Wrapping the output in diff ... doesn't work well since the DNSControl output has a number before each changed record. It would partially work for providers that process changes in the whole zone or all records of each type at once, but the first line of output would not be colored since it won't start with + or -. I know that isn't quite what you're suggesting but I hoped it might be that easy.

Parsing the ANSI escape sequences to convert into a supported format seems like sort of a big project that could stand on its own. This action disables ANSI colors with the NO_COLOR environment variable and that could be changed if there was an easy to use filter to convert the colors.

Of course, you will have to process stdout a little bit, but I have already managed to do so:

https://github.com/SukkaW/dnscontrol-gitops-template/blob/17c9729632d070ac81cbeba1674c434450246951/filter-preview-output.sh#L15-L21

GitHub comment example:

[SukkaW]

SukkaW/dnscontrol-gitops-template@7ce281e

In fact, I have already managed to be able to pipe DNSControl stdout in real time while buffering it to a temp file (to later to be read as a variable)

[eliheady]

I think this would be a nice addition to the action. @SukkaW would you be interested in contributing it in a PR? Wrapping the dnscontrol output in ```diff ... ``` and piping it through your sed command are simple tweaks to get a nice visual improvement.