BAT_THEME_DARK and BAT_THEME_LIGHT don't work while --theme-dark and --theme-light do

[sherif-fanous]

What steps will reproduce the bug?

1. export BAT_THEME_DARK="Catppuccin Macchiato"
2. export BAT_THEME_LIGHT="Catppuccin Latte"
3. bat lib/util/resource.py

What happens?

bat prints the file using the default theme

What did you expect to happen instead?

bat to print the file using either the dark or light theme specified using the environment variables

This works using the command line arguments as invoking bat --theme-dark="Catppuccin Macchiato" --theme-light="Catppuccin Latte" lib/util/resource.py has bat printing the file using the correct Catppuccin theme depending on whether the system is in dark/light mode

How did you install bat?

homebrew

---

bat version and environment

Software version

bat 0.25.0

Operating system

• OS: macOS 15.2 Sequoia
• Kernel: 24.2.0

Command-line

bat lib/util/resource.py --diagnostic

Environment variables

BAT_CACHE_PATH=<not set>
BAT_CONFIG_PATH=<not set>
BAT_OPTS=<not set>
BAT_PAGER=<not set>
BAT_PAGING=<not set>
BAT_STYLE=<not set>
BAT_TABS=<not set>
BAT_THEME=<not set>
COLORTERM=truecolor
LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
LC_ALL=<not set>
LESS=-R
MANPAGER=<not set>
NO_COLOR=<not set>
PAGER=less
SHELL=/bin/zsh
TERM=xterm-ghostty
XDG_CACHE_HOME=<not set>
XDG_CONFIG_HOME=<not set>

System Config file

Could not read contents of '/etc/bat/config': No such file or directory (os error 2).

Config file

Could not read contents of '/Users/sherif/.config/bat/config': No such file or directory (os error 2).

Custom assets metadata

bat_version: 0.25.0
creation_time:
  secs_since_epoch: 1736386552
  nanos_since_epoch: 315366000

Custom assets

• metadata.yaml, 97 bytes
• syntaxes.bin, 969578 bytes
• themes.bin, 49230 bytes

Compile time information

• Profile: release
• Target triple: aarch64-apple-darwin
• Family: unix
• OS: macos
• Architecture: aarch64
• Pointer width: 64
• Endian: little
• CPU features: aes,crc,dit,dotprod,dpb,dpb2,fcma,fhm,flagm,fp16,frintts,jsconv,lor,lse,neon,paca,pacg,pan,pmuv3,ras,rcpc,rcpc2,rdm,sb,sha2,sha3,ssbs,vh
• Host: aarch64-apple-darwin

Less version

> less --version
less 581.2 (POSIX regular expressions)
Copyright (C) 1984-2021  Mark Nudelman

less comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
For information about the terms of redistribution,
see the file named README in the less distribution.
Home page: https://greenwoodsoftware.com/less

[keith-hall]

Thanks for reporting. A PR fixing this can be found here: #3168

[janxkoci]

Is this why I have white text on white background when I set GNOME to light theme? I'm not sure how to check better, since I cannot try most of the commands above (I don't have the themes and files, just using whatever is the default of bat). I'm using Manjaro GNOME with bat installed by conda (from conda-forge channel).

PS: sorry, found the real ticket here #3116