How to set character encoding for cypress runner?

[Maxim-Mazurok]

I'm getting this in logs of my proprietary CI on Windows:

[#1]  ÔöîÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÉ
[#1]  Ôöé Tests:        3                                                                                Ôöé
[#1]  Ôöé Passing:      3                                                                                Ôöé
[#1]  Ôöé Failing:      0                                                                                Ôöé
[#1]  Ôöé Pending:      0                                                                                Ôöé
[#1]  Ôöé Skipped:      0                                                                                Ôöé
[#1]  Ôöé Screenshots:  0                                                                                Ôöé
[#1]  Ôöé Video:        true                                                                             Ôöé
[#1]  Ôöé Duration:     6 seconds                                                                        Ôöé
[#1]  Ôöé Spec Ran:     schedule.spec.ts                                                                 Ôöé
[#1]  ÔööÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÇÔöÿ

And I expect this:

[#1]  ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
[#1]  │ Tests:        3                                                                                │
[#1]  │ Passing:      3                                                                                │
[#1]  │ Failing:      0                                                                                │
[#1]  │ Pending:      0                                                                                │
[#1]  │ Skipped:      0                                                                                │
[#1]  │ Screenshots:  0                                                                                │
[#1]  │ Video:        true                                                                             │
[#1]  │ Duration:     6 seconds                                                                        │
[#1]  │ Spec Ran:     schedule.spec.ts                                                                 │
[#1]  └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

I've tried setting encoding to unicode using chcp 65001 in the same cmd script before running cypress, but that didn't help.

It helps to downlad log and run this: iconv -t CP850 -f UTF-8 downloadBuildData.txt

My collegue reported that he had the same issue on our CI with Python, and solved it like this:

CHCP 65001
SET PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8

He also sais:

The log looks like Cypress is not producing Unicode output. If the application does not support UTF, setting chcp alone will not be enough.

I was considering using node_modules patching to replace box drawing characters, but it seems like it's part of the binary.

Any idea on how I can force Cypress to produce Unicode output?

Thank you!

[Maxim-Mazurok]

Turned out it's our CI system that treated input as ASCII and outputted it as UTF-8.

[byahia]

Hi Maxim. How did you fix this on the CI side?

[Maxim-Mazurok]

Hi Maxim. How did you fix this on the CI side?

I couldn't, I created an incident for the CI system to add support for UTF characters, but they have no plans to fix that, unfortunately.

Potential solution was to patch npm modules, but the output seems to be coming from the binary so this wasn't feasible.

Alternative is to collect machine readable cypress logs and then output them in a way that your CI will understand. This is what we're doing in some of the projects and is probably your best bet if you're stuck with a CI that has a subpar developer experience. Hope that helps!