Chalk alternatives

[Lehoczky]

There are a number of alternatives to chalk which all tries to be a leaner, more performant alternative:

• picocolors
• yoctocolors
• colorette

[Lehoczky]

We could also want about colors.js, since it is unmaintained, and had a "regression" in their last releases: Marak/colors.js#285

[43081j]

chalk is an interesting one - since 5.x they have no runtime dependencies, so it isn't anywhere near as bad as it used to be

i think we should document the alternatives here but not necessarily pull it into the linter yet.

especially since chalk 5 is 44KB/5KB (install size / minified size), while picocolors is 5.2KB/1.7KB

its also worth mentioning the latest node includes styleText which can be used in common/basic use cases at least (assuming you can require such a node version):
https://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/util.html#utilstyletextformat-text

[zloirock]

I think that the current version of chalk is fine and it's not required. Yes, it's not a tiny package, but it's not a reason to insist on replacement.

[43081j]

im going to close this for now at least since chalk is no longer bloated so much 👍

[webdiscus]

@Lehoczky,

here is the compare of most popular chalk alternatives: chalk, ansis, kleur, ansi-colors, kolorist, colorette, picocolors, cli-color, colors-cli, colors.js

• compare by size
• compare features
• benchmarks

[dei8bit]

@Lehoczky,

here is the compare of most popular chalk alternatives: chalk, ansis, kleur, ansi-colors, kolorist, colorette, picocolors, cli-color, colors-cli, colors.js

• compare by size
• compare features
• benchmarks

I absolutely love the sincerity of that readme, this is definitely how all the benchmarks in the dev world should be done.