xfgusta / strace-with-colors

A patch to add colors to the strace output

strace, but with colors

This patch adds colored output to the strace program.

The --color option

From strace --help

  --color[=WHEN]
                 colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always', 'auto' (default), or 'never'

• always will always colorize the output
• never will never colorize the output
• auto will only colorize the output when standard output is connected to a terminal

Using --output or setting the NO_COLOR environment variable will disable the colored output.

Installation

Arch Linux

strace-with-colors package from AUR

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/strace-with-colors.git
cd strace-with-colors
makepkg -si

Fedora Linux

strace-with-colors package from Copr

dnf copr enable xfgusta/strace-with-colors
dnf install strace-with-colors

From source

Clone the strace git repository and go to the directory

git clone https://github.com/strace/strace
cd strace

Checkout the tag v6.3 (latest version)

git checkout tags/v6.3

Get the patch source here and apply it

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xfgusta/strace-with-colors/main/strace-with-colors.patch
git apply strace-with-colors.patch

Now you are ready to build and install strace with colors!

./bootstrap
./configure --enable-mpers=no
make install

You may need to install some dependencies before, like:

• make
• autoconf
• automake
• gcc
• ...

You can actually check all the strace installation instructions here.

The program will be in the /usr/local/bin directory. You can uninstall it running make uninstall.

Screenshot

Color scheme

Here is the color scheme used in the screenshot above:

FG	Name	Color
0	Black	#2d3139
1	Red	#e06c75
2	Green	#98c379
3	Yellow	#e5c07b
4	Blue	#528bff
5	Magenta	#c678dd
6	Cyan	#56b6c2
7	White	#d7dae0