What are the conditions for a terminal being "colour-capable"?

Question

I am curious that how a program determines its terminal supports colour as I am trying to create some terminal apps like this, however it doesn't seem to be outputting colours (just plain gray text) and upon inspecting the environment of the java it runs, I found

HOME=/home/user
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LOGNAME=root
LS_COLORS=rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:mh=00:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:mi=00:su=37;41:sg=30;43:ca=30;41:tw=30;42
MAIL=/var/mail/root
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin
SHELL=/bin/bash
SUDO_COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/minecraftd -d
SUDO_GID=1000
SUDO_UID=1000
SUDO_USER=user
TERM=xterm-256color
USER=root
USERNAME=root

Which has a $TERM supporting colours.

And upon inspecting the environment of another process which outputs colours properly (FYI it's bash), I found

GCC_COLORS=error=01;31:warning=01;35:note=01;36:caret=01;32:locus=01:quote=01
HOME=/home/user
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LESSCLOSE=/usr/bin/lesspipe %s %s
LESSOPEN=| /usr/bin/lesspipe %s
LOGNAME=user
LS_COLORS=rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:mh=00:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:mi=00:su=37;41:sg=30;43:ca=30;41:tw=30;42
MAIL=/var/mail/user
MYSQL_PS1=\u@\h [\c/\d]>
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games
PWD=/home/user
SHELL=/bin/bash
SHLVL=1
SSH_CLIENT=[irrelevant]
SSH_CONNECTION=[irrelevant]
SSH_TTY=/dev/pts/4
TERM=screen
TMUX=/tmp/tmux-1000/default,28912,0
TMUX_PANE=%3
USER=user
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000
XDG_SESSION_ID=c57
_=/usr/bin/tmux

Which also has a $TERM supporting colours.

My question is, how a program determine if colours is supported because I have troubles figuring it out.

Answer 1

The value of TERM denotes color if one of these is true:

• a program uses TERM to find a terminal description (in terminfo or termcap) and looks at the capabilities in that description to see if it supports color, or

• a program uses some other mechanism (usually hardcoded) to associate that value with "color".

A Java application won't be using the terminal database, except rarely (rare enough that you can take it for granted that it's not a possibility). It might use some hard-coded behavior (but then it will have to construct escape sequences and write those — again, not often done).

Some programs which can produce escape sequences will check if their output is redirected (not going to a terminal), and will suppress those escape sequences to make log-files, etc., easier to read. You can work around those by running them in script (which makes the process running in script "see" that it is writing to a terminal, while script captures the output to its own typescript file).