Magit fails, status contains weird characters

Question

When I run magit-status I see the following:

And when I run git status at the terminal I see the following:

What gives? I'm unable to 'stage' the modified file for commit. When I try to commit with magit, I'm told that there is nothing staged.

For reference, I've added my git config

# all the color
[color]
    ui = always
[color "diff"]
    meta = yellow bold
    commit = green bold
    frag = magenta bold
    old = red bold
    new = green bold
    whitespace = red reverse
[color "diff-highlight"]
    oldNormal = red bold
    oldHighlight = "red bold 52"
    newNormal = "green bold"
    newHighlight = "green bold 22"
[color "branch"]
    current = yellow reverse
    local = yellow
    remote = green
[color "status"]
    added = yellow
    changed = green
    untracked = cyan

# correct typos
[help]
    autocorrect = 1

# aliases
[alias]
  c = commit
  b = branch
  up = pull
  p = push
  s = status -s
  sclone = clone --depth=1
  co = checkout
  df = diff --color --color-words --abbrev
  lg = log --color --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit --

  # Show the diff between the latest commit and the current state
  d = !"git diff-index --quiet HEAD -- || clear; git --no-pager diff --patch-with-stat"

  reup = rebase-update # depot_tools specific

[user]
    email = nland@authen2cate.com
    name = Nicholas Land

[core]
    editor = nvim
    autocrlf = input
    pager = diff-highlight | diff-so-fancy | less -r

[push]
    default = simple

[difftool "kdiff3"]
  trustExitCode = false
[difftool]
  prompt = false
[diff]
  tool = kdiff3

[mergetool "kdiff3NoAuto"]
  trustExitCode = false
[mergetool]
  keepBackup = false
[merge]
  tool = kdiff3NoAuto
[mergetool "kdiff3NoAuto"]
    cmd = kdiff3 --L1 \"$MERGED (Base)\" --L2 \"$MERGED (Local)\" --L3 \"$MERGED (Remote)\" -o \"$MERGED\" \"$BASE\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"

[credential]
    helper = osxkeychain

[filter "lfs"]
    clean = git-lfs clean %f
    smudge = git-lfs smudge %f
    required = true

[commit]
    template = /Users/nick/.gitCommitMessage

Answer 1

Git has the ability to detect in many cases whether its output is being printed to a terminal, or piped to another process. When it is being printed to a terminal, you have the option of using ascii escape sequences to provide text formatting and coloring. However, most programs are not set up to handle these escape sequences.

By specifying the --color=always argument or setting color.ui = always in your config, you are telling git to always add the ascii escape sequences for coloring. Since magit does not know how to parse these sequences, it stops working properly.

Instead, use the --color=auto argument or set color.ui = auto in your config file to tell git to apply coloring, but only in cases where it makes sense.