In terminal emulators, bash fails to render correct background color

[Elderry]

My Windows build number: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.15063]

It seems that in many terminal emulators, after running a command that outputs colors to the terminal using bash, the background will become a strange gray or black. But the default Windows Console doesn't has this problem. Here are the examples:

Integrated Terminal of Visual Studio Code:

Integrated Terminal of Intellij IDEA:

Default Windows Console:

To provide more detail, here is my bash prompt:

BLUE='\e[1;34m'
GREEN='\e[1;32m'
RESET='\e[0m'
source $HOME/Projects/Personal/posh-git-sh/git-prompt.sh
PROMPT_COMMAND='__posh_git_ps1 "" "${BLUE}\w\n${GREEN}\u@\h${RESET} > "'

[zadjii-msft]

I believe this is already fixed in Insider's builds - I believe it's a dupe of #1706

[Elderry]

@zadjii-msft I'm afraid this issue remains, today my Windows updated to: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.16299.19], and I reinstalled Ubuntu using Microsoft Store.

[zadjii-msft]

Hmm. That's certainly weird.

@Elderry Can you open a powershell window, and post a screenshot of the colors tab of the property sheet?

[Elderry]

@zadjii-msft Here it is:

[zadjii-msft]

@Elderry Okay, this is gonna sound crazy, but what happens if you switch the first and last values of the color table in the Powershell properties dialog, and instead choose the first color (now white) as your "Screen Background" and the last (now black) as the "Screen Text", then open a new vscode?

[Elderry]

@zadjii-msft I did as you say, nothing changes:

[zadjii-msft]

Okay shoot. I was hoping that might help. Can you try pasting this file into a file called 256color.pl and running it (with perl 256color.pl) in both the console window and the vscode window?

[Elderry]

It looks terrible in vscode's terminal:

[Elderry]

@zadjii-msft Seems it is an upstream issue caused by winpty referred here.

[zadjii-msft]

Oh, that's not the issue I was mostly concerned about. I was more concerned about the white and black entries in the first 8 colors printed are reversed in VScode from what you'd expect.

I think I have an idea of how this happened. If you look in the registry, under Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console, is ScreenColors set to 0xf0 (240)?

I think VSCode is using the console defaults, not the properties. So because your default color selection is Color00 (dark_black) text on Color15 (bright_white) background, and VScode changes 00->white and 15-> black, your "default" colors in vscode are white on black, even if the rest of the background is white.

If you really want black text on white for all of your terminals, then I'd just replicate VSCode's behavior in your defaults manually, and switch the first and last entries of the "Defaults" in the console settings.

[Elderry]

@zadjii-msft You are right, my ScreenColors entry is set to 0xf0, and other things happen just like you say. I prefer to keep my current settings because switching entries will change the definition of my DARK_BLACK and BRIGHT_WHITE. Thank you for your time.

Now my problem is why vscode choose to changes 00->white and 15->black, even Intellij IDEA's integrated terminal does the same.

[bitcrazed]

This issue was moved to microsoft/terminal#88