Getting ANSI (color) escape codes to render in Windows terminal

Today, I had the opportunity to help a colleague on the test team get his terminal to display colorized text properly so that he could more effectively read his Cucumber tests results.

At first, I installed CYWIN on his Windows 7 (64bit) box because CYGWIN's terminal window shells, e.g., RXVT terminal, display the text using color codes, unlike the stock MS Windows terminal/console application.

Here are some things we learned:

• RBENV does not install easily under CYGWIN
• It's better to go with the stock Ruby install from CYGWIN
• Windows terminal emulators run a little faster than CYGWIN terminal applications

So, we ended up installing CONSOLE from http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/

Console is a Windows console window enhancement. Console features include: multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles

Now, he's can read his colored Cucumber test results in the Console and he has an install of CGWIN, which he can use for nice unix'y command line fu.

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