Git has an (somewhat inconsistent) set of "color = always" options to override the automated terminal detection. Demo of one of the (too many) options:

git diff                            # colored           :-)
git diff                | less      # not colored       :-(
git diff --color=always | less  -R  # colored again!    :-(

It would nice for west to offer the same feature.

While rarer, color=never is sometimes needed too. For instance some CI engines try hard to pretend they are terminals to capture colors but then can fail to display them for some reason.

cc:

• Parallel update #551 (comment) - mysterious colorama issues