Colorize your Windows console life with symfony
Symfony | Technical | July 18, 2010
For many years, Windows and symfony users have been neglected the right to see stylish colors in their life, or at least in their command line. However the use of colors has some importance, for example when running tests. Differentiating the red tests from the green ones, let us easily see where the errors are quickly.
By using symfony 1.3/1.4 and making some configurations the dark past is over. Here ANSICON comes to the rescue, allowing Windows to understand ANSI color codes and other escape sequences.
The first step is to download the ANSI.dll file from the ANSICON site. Now extract and copy the ANSI.dll file to the c:\windows\system32 folder (or any folder available like c:\ansicon). If you have chosen another folder than system32 you need to add the PATH to the PATH-Environment-Variable in the system settings.
The second step is to start ansicon with "ansicon -i". This executable file is also contained in the original downloaded zip file. The purpose of this command is to install a registry setting.
The final and last step is to test the colors in the command line, for example by running the beloved "symfony test:all" command.
References:
http://www.symfony-zone.com/wordpress/2009/10/15/colorize-your-windows-console-output/