color-eyre

color-eyre is an eyre report handler that produces colorful, multi-section error reports with integrated panic hooks. It is one of the most popular choices for CLI application error presentation, though its GitHub repository is now archived.

Key features

color-eyre installs both an error report handler and a panic hook, producing consistent, visually rich output for both. It captures SpanTrace (via tracing-error) and Backtrace, with an important distinction: SpanTrace capture is significantly cheaper than Backtrace capture and is enabled by default.

A notable performance gotcha: eyre uses std::backtrace::Backtrace (precompiled with optimizations), while color-eyre depends on backtrace::Backtrace, whose debug build can be an order of magnitude slower to capture. The docs provide guidance for optimizing the backtrace crate in dev profiles.

Maintenance status

The eyre-rs organization marks the color-eyre repository as archived. It is still widely used and functional, but watch for maintenance gaps if you're adopting it for a new project. The core functionality is stable enough that archival is not an immediate concern, but long-term alternatives like miette may be safer bets for new projects needing rich error presentation.

Typical stack

color-eyre sits at the top of the error stack: library crates define typed errors with thiserror or snafu, application code wraps them in eyre's Report, and color-eyre handles the final rendering. See rust-error-crate-comparison for the full decision matrix.