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kubecolor

Command-line flags

Available flags for kubecolor. When you pass them, kubecolor will understand them and filter out these flags before passing the remaining arguments to kubectl.

As an example, if you run:

Terminal window
kubecolor get pods --force-colors --namespace=kube-system

Then kubecolor will translate that to the following kubectl invokation:

Terminal window
kubectl get pods --namespace=kube-system

--kubecolor-version

Prints the version of kubecolor (not kubectl one).

--kubecolor-stdin

Don’t run kubectl but instead only parse and print. Works as a sort of “dry run” for kubecolor coloring. The arguments for the kubecolor command (such as get pods or describe pod) still matters as they tell kubecolor how to parse and colorize the output.

By default if you only supply the --kubecolor-stdin flag with no value then it will read from stdin. Example:

Terminal window
kubectl get pods > results.txt
cat results.txt | kubecolor get pods --kubecolor-stdin

Alternatively you can provide a path from which kubecolor will read from that file instead of from stdin:

Terminal window
kubectl get pods > results.txt
kubecolor get pods --kubecolor-stdin=results.txt

You can use this feature to colorize any arbitrary output, such as using kubecolor’s log parsing and colorizing on Docker logs:

Terminal window
docker logs my-container | kubecolor logs --kubecolor-stdin

--light-background

When your terminal’s background color is something light (e.g white), default color preset might look too bright and not readable. If so, specify --light-background as a command line argument. kubecolor will use a color preset for light-background environment.

This is an alias for --kubecolor-theme=light

--kubecolor-theme

Sets the kubecolor color theme preset. You must provide a value for this flag, like so:

Terminal window
kubecolor get pods --kubecolor-theme=dark

See: Customizing / Color themes

--force-colors

By default, kubecolor never output the result in colors when the tty is not a terminal standard output. If you want to force kubecolor to show the result in colors for non-terminal tty, you can specify this flag. For example, when you want to pass kubecolor result to grep (e.g kubecolor get pods --force-colors | grep pod_name), this option is useful. It supports multiple values in the form of --force-colors=.... Just specifying --force-colors is the same as --force-colors=auto.

See: Usage / How it works # Dynamic color support

--plain

When you don’t want to colorize output, you can specify --plain. Kubecolor understands this option and outputs the result without colorizing.

This is an alias for --force-colors=none.

--no-paging

Disable piping the output to a pager.

This is an alias for --paging=never.

--paging

Enables piping the (both colored or uncolored) kubecolor command output through a pager (e.g less or more).

You can also supply a value, such as --paging=auto. The only option are:

  • --paging=auto: Performs paging on supported commands (e.g kubectl get, but not kubectl get --watch)
  • --paging=never: Disables paging

Just specifying --paging is the same as specifying --paging=auto.

Defaults to never.

--pager=cmd

Configures which pager command to pipe kubecolor’s output through (if paging is enabled).

Defaults to:

  • less -RF if less executable is found in $PATH,
  • more if more executable is found in $PATH,
  • if neither, then defaults to empty string.

If no default pager is found, or if pager is reset via --pager="", then paging is effectively disabled.

If pager was found but failed to execute, or if pager was set to something invalid like --pager=does-not-exist, then kubecolor will log an error message but continue with the execution as normal:

Terminal window
kubecolor get pods --paging=auto --pager=does-not-exist
# [kubecolor] [ERROR] failed to run pager: exec: "does-not-exist": executable file not found in $PATH
# NAME          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
# nginx-dnmv5   1/1     Running   0          6d6h
# nginx-m8pbc   1/1     Running   0          6d6h
# nginx-qdf9b   1/1     Running   0          6d6h