How to preserve colors in logs with Multitail?

ansi-escape, colors, tail

Solution

It's all about interpreting ANSI escape sequences which does terminal not `tail` itself and have to do `multitail` as well. It can be done with `-cT ANSI` option:

-cT term    interpret terminal-codes from file/command (for terminal type 'term')

Example:

$ multitail -cT ansi log/development.log
multiple files:
$ multitail -cT ansi log/development.log -cT ANSI log/test.log

Problem

Output of `tail logs/development.log` in XFCE Terminal: ``` multitail log/development.log ``` Rails adds escape codes to log files automatically. See `development.log` file: ``` ^[[1m^[[36m (84.1ms)^[[0m ^[[1mCREATE TABLE "schema_migrations" ("version" varchar(255) NOT NULL) ^[[0m ^[[1m^[[35m (92.6ms)^[[0m CREATE UNIQUE INDEX "unique_schema_migrations" ON "schema_migrations" ("version") ^[[1m^[[36m (0.2ms)^[[0m ^[[1mSELECT version FROM "schema_migrations"^[[0m ^[[1m^[[35m (159.3ms)^[[0m INSERT INTO "schema_migrations" (version) VALUES ('20130327221553') ^[[1m^[[36m (59.9ms)^[[0m ^[[1mINSERT INTO "schema_migrations" (version) VALUES ('20130326152730')^[[0m ^[[1m^[[35m (59.8ms)^[[0m INSERT INTO "schema_migrations" (version) VALUES ('20130327173637') ``` `multitail -c` produce non-usable output. How to colorize logs in Multitail without writing own color scheme?

Original source