Install grc with Homebrew, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• grc
• grcat

Project history

Radovan Garabik describes grc as his response to the many separate logfile and command-output colorizers that existed around the late 1990s. The project split the work into two programs: grcat, the filter that reads standard input and applies color rules, and grc, the front end that runs another command and selects an appropriate grcat configuration.

The upstream Debian-style changelog records version 0.1 as the initial release on 1999-10-14 and version 1.0 as the first stable version on 2001-02-23. Subsequent entries show the project accumulating the kind of practical terminal features package users notice: stderr handling, nested and overlapping regexes, multiline blocks, skip rules, diff coloring, Python 3 compatibility work, zsh alias compatibility, and additional command configurations.

Adoption history

grc fit naturally into Unix packaging because it is a wrapper around existing commands, ships as a small script-and-configuration package, and can be enabled per shell through bash, zsh, or fish snippets. The batch package facts list it across Homebrew, Debian, Fedora, MacPorts, Nix, Arch, Ubuntu, and openSUSE ecosystems, which matches its role as a portable terminal enhancement rather than a platform-specific application.

How it is used

Typical use is interactive: run commands such as grc ping hostname, grc tail /var/log/syslog, or pipe data through grcat with a named configuration. grc chooses color rules from /etc/grc.conf or ~/.grc/grc.conf, then grcat searches user and system configuration directories for the referenced rule file.

The configuration model is intentionally plain text. Rules are regular expressions with keywords such as regexp, colours, command, concat, skip, replace, and count, so package maintainers and users can add color rules without changing the program.

Why package nerds care

grc is a classic package-nerd utility because its value grows with distro integration: the useful part is not just the executable, but the curated set of color files, shell snippets, and install paths that make common commands nicer immediately after installation.

It also illustrates the long tail of terminal polish packages: small, old, stable-enough tools that persist because they compose with everything else in the shell.

Timeline

• 1999: Version 0.1 initial release recorded in the upstream changelog.
• 2001: Version 1.0 marked as the first stable version.
• 2003: grcat gained an error path for missing configuration files.
• 2013: Preliminary Python 3 support appeared in version 1.5.
• 2017: Version 1.10 was marked Python 3 compatible and added many configurations.
• 2018: Version 1.11.3 made --colour=auto the default.
• 2021: Version 1.13 and 1.13.1 refined shell alias behavior and IP address coloring.

Related projects

• grcat is the filtering half of the grc project.
• The upstream README explicitly frames grc among older command-output colorizers such as colortail, gccolor, and colormake.
• Shell startup snippets for bash, zsh, and fish are part of the practical packaging surface.

Sources

• https://github.com/garabik/grc
• https://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/software/grc.html
• https://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/software/grc/README.txt
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/garabik/grc/master/debian/changelog