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Color for compiler errors

When building OpenFOAM-based code, I notice that GCC does not use any color (which is the default behavior), making it sometimes difficult to read error messages. I am not sure which compilation rule could be overriding the default behavior or why, but I can get color if I pass -fdiagnostics-color=always to the compiler options.

Questions:

  1. Is this explicitly disabled for some reason? I can imagine that some terminals don't interpret colors by default.
  2. Where would it be the most appropriate to set this for:
    • my system (globally)? An environment variable for extra compiler flags would be very useful.
    • my OpenFOAM-based code? We typically have EXE_INC (meant for includes) and LIB_LIBS (meant for the libraries). Is there anything else?
  3. If revisiting (1) is worth it: does it make sense enabling colorization by default in OpenFOAM for GCC?