aliases.sh: allow pipe to work

[temsa]

After investigating for a while why this issue, by which I have been affected recently, happened, I found out that we could avoid this pipe problem.

this is how typically it materializes :

$ node -e 'console.log(666)'
666

$ node -e 'console.log(666)' | pino-pretty
stdout is not a tty

$ node.exe -e 'console.log(666)' | pino-pretty
666

We just need to use the undocumented switch from winpty to allow for the pipe to another command to actually work without getting into stdout is not a tty. It also still provides the value of winpty, e.g. for running an interactive shell

This PR just adds the switch, which should allow both of those commands to work in the intended manner:

$ node.exe -e 'console.log(666)' | pino-pretty
666

$ node -e 'console.log(666)' | pino-pretty
666

[dscho]

Interesting! This switch was introduced in rprichard/winpty@222ecb9. The commit message suggests that those options might be pulled at any point, but then, they have been in winpty since 2016...

[dscho]

Seems that the -X options are still under consideration: rprichard/winpty#103. Might be worth reviving that discussion, as well as rprichard/winpty#101.

[temsa]

Moving instead to a wrapper script running winpty only when relevant could be an option too, like rprichard/winpty#101 (comment), but I've also asked if this option is here to stay

[rimrul]

I don't think you'll get a response, active winpty development has seemingly stopped a few years ago.
A wrapper script is probably still the better solution, since it prevents running into the issue that is outlined in rprichard/winpty#103 (comment), i.e. programs that don't produce coloured output when piped to a file producing colour sequences when piped to a file in Git Bash.

[dscho]

A wrapper script is probably still the better solution

Since we're talking about a Bash alias, we could do the same in the alias itself, too, right?

[dscho]

Since we're talking about a Bash alias, we could do the same in the alias itself, too, right?

Seems that I was wrong about aliases: they cannot contain if-then-else blocks. But shell functions can:

$ unalias node

$ function node () { if test -t 0 -a -t 1; then winpty.exe node.exe "$@"; else node.exe "$@"; fi; }

$ node
Welcome to Node.js v16.15.0.
Type ".help" for more information.
> console.log("123")
123
undefined
> process.exit(0)

$ node -e 'console.log("123")' | cat
123

[dscho]

@temsa how about trying your hand at patching aliases.sh accordingly?

[dscho]

Let's just close this PR, it's multi-year stale.