The color changes should only be done if you're using termcap or terminfo to figure out what strings to use. They don't work on the linux xterm I'm using: % sh run.sh glue \e[0;1mS:glue:Mon Sep 4 14:39:16 PDT 2017 T:glue:1:A A:System test glue \e[0mI:testing that a ccTLD referral gets a full glue set from the root zone I:testing that we don't find out-of-zone glue I:exit status: 0 \e[0;32mR:PASS \e[0m\e[0;1mE:glue:Mon Sep 4 14:39:17 PDT 2017 On systems that have tput, you can use that. I've pushed a change to the branch for this. At the moment I'm inclined to suggest we don't commit the color change at all, and open a different ticket to discuss it further. I do like the idea of color-coded test output, but it seems to me it would be even better if we filtered the output from tests.sh, so "I:failed" could be highlighted when it appeared.