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Enhanced Color Output Support and Code Quality Improvements

· 2 min read
Erik Osterman
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

This release brings powerful enhancements to color output in CI/CD environments and significant code quality improvements that make Atmos more maintainable and performant.

Enhanced Color Output Support​

Color output in CI/CD pipelines and non-TTY environments is now fully supported through the ATMOS_FORCE_COLOR environment variable:

# Force colored output in CI/CD
export ATMOS_FORCE_COLOR=true
atmos terraform plan myapp -s dev

# Supports truthy values: 1, true, yes, on, always, 2, 3
# Supports falsy values: 0, false, no, off

This enhancement ensures that Atmos help text, logs, and command output render beautifully even when piped or redirected, making debugging in CI/CD environments much easier.

Code Quality Improvements​

This release includes significant internal improvements:

Reduced Cognitive Complexity​

  • Functions with cognitive complexity >15 have been refactored
  • Better separation of concerns with single-responsibility functions
  • Improved testability across the codebase

Enhanced Performance Tracking​

All public functions now include performance instrumentation:

defer perf.Track(atmosConfig, "package.FunctionName")()

This allows us to identify bottlenecks and optimize performance in future releases.

Better Error Handling​

  • Consistent use of static errors from errors/errors.go
  • Proper error wrapping with context
  • Use of errors.Join() for combining multiple errors.

What's Next​

We're continuing to improve Atmos with:

  • Additional template functions for dynamic configurations
  • Enhanced validation and policy enforcement
  • Better integration with cloud provider CLIs
  • More comprehensive testing infrastructure

Upgrade Notes​

This release maintains backward compatibility. To take advantage of the new features:

  1. Update to the latest Atmos version
  2. Consider using ATMOS_FORCE_COLOR in CI/CD pipelines for better debugging

Contributors​

This release includes contributions from the Atmos team and community. Thank you to everyone who provided feedback, reported issues, and contributed code!

For the complete list of changes, see the GitHub release notes.

Have questions or feedback? Join us on Slack or open an issue on GitHub.