what is eating dircolors?

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Sat, Jul 31, 2004 at 04:05:36PM -0600, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> So far I failed to notice
> where this may be even documented but something tells me that
> TERM=gnome may be responsible.

Commenting on my own posting: looking at sources instead of
documentation indeed the above is the case.  LS_COLORS will
be non-empty only if in a file with color definitions, say
/etc/DIR_COLORS, there is an entry for a termtype you happen
to be using.  So addding there on a target host a line

TERM gnome

makes 'dircolors' to behave like expected.

The catch, of course, is that you may have many Linux systems
around where you are connecting and not necessarily an access
to DIR_COLORS files there.  You may use a file in your home
directory on a target but, again, I do not see where this is
documented in a explicit manner.

In general for non-Linux systems I suspect that hardly anything will
know what TERM=gnome will happen to be and this will affect many
programs.  Think 'vi', 'less' and 'man' for a start.  Was a decision
to switch to this  termtype deliberate?  Even if you open an xterm
window it says 'gnome' for 'echo $TERM'.  Sounds like a recipe for a
big mess.

   Michal