net5.0 project has no color on console output with dotnet watch run

[jmalatia]

After upgrading a project to net5.0 (5.0.1), Serilog console output colors stopped working.

After playing around for while I experienced:

• If I do a dotnet watch run --environment "Development" no color (this is our normal usage in our development flow and colors always showed in netcore2.2, netcore3.1 apps)
• If I do a dotnet run --environment "Development" everything is in color as expected
• Using Visual Studio > Start Debugging > The console output is in color.

Setup:

appsettings.json

{
  "Serilog": {
    "MinimumLevel": {
      "Using": [ "Serilog.Sinks.Console", "Serilog.Sinks.File" ],
      "Default": "Information",
      "Override": {
        "Microsoft.AspNetCore": "Warning"
      }
    },
    "Enrich": [
      "FromLogContext"
    ],
    "WriteTo": [
      {
        "Name": "Console",
        "Args": {
          "theme": "Serilog.Sinks.SystemConsole.Themes.AnsiConsoleTheme::Literate, Serilog.Sinks.Console",   // tried with and without this line with no changes
          "applyThemeToRedirectedOutput": true,   // tried with and without this line with no changes
          "outputTemplate": "[{Timestamp:hh:mm:ss tt} {Level:u3}] {Message:lj} {Properties:j}{NewLine}{Exception}"  // tried with and without this line with no changes
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

program.cs

public static IHostBuilder CreateHostBuilder(string[] args)
        {
            Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("LOGDIR", AppContext.BaseDirectory);

            return Host.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
                .UseSerilog((hostingContext, loggerConfiguration) => 
                        loggerConfiguration.ReadFrom.Configuration(hostingContext.Configuration)
                )
                .ConfigureWebHostDefaults(webBuilder =>
                {
                    webBuilder.UseStartup<Startup>();
                });
        }

startup.cs

     app.UseSerilogRequestLogging();

Tried using Serilog.AspNetCore 3.4.0 and Serilog.AspNetCore 3.4.1-dev-00188

[nblumhardt]

Thanks! This appears to be an instance of dotnet/aspnetcore#25317

[jmalatia]

Thanks for the link @nblumhardt!

Changed my launchSettings.json removing the entry launchBrowser and the colors returned.

[johnnyreilly]

Thanks @jmalatia - that fix worked for me too

[iappwebdev]

So this solution did not work for me, but was worked was to set applyThemeToRedirectedOutput to true in the logger configuration. I found this solution here: color themes not appearing in output

Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
            .WriteTo.Console(theme: AnsiConsoleTheme.Literate, applyThemeToRedirectedOutput: true)
            .CreateLogger();

Or in appsettings.json:

"WriteTo": [
  {
    "Name": "Console",
    "Args": {
      "applyThemeToRedirectedOutput": true,
      "theme": "Serilog.Sinks.SystemConsole.Themes.AnsiConsoleTheme::Literate, Serilog.Sinks.Console",
      "outputTemplate": "{Timestamp:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff} [{Level:u3}] {Message:lj}   [{SourceContext}]{NewLine}{Exception}"
    }
  }
]

Read the configuration:

services.AddSerilog((hostingContext, loggerConfiguration) => loggerConfiguration.ReadFrom.Configuration(configuration));