Why don't git colors show up in iTerm2

You should check that iTerm is setting the TERM variable correctly. On my system, I see:

echo $TERM
xterm-256color

And have working colours in git. This is set according to the 'Report Terminal Type' property in iTerm's preferences.

You should also check the Colors tab, and ensure the contrast slider isn't all the way to the right.

In my case I had coloured output from other terminal applications in iTerm, just not git. For anyone still looking to solve this, what did it for me was the solution from http://buildamodule.com/forum/post/iterm-git-ui-colors.

Modify your global git config as follows:

git config --global color.ui true

I found an answer to this via http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/issues/detail?id=1639 that works for me.

"The solution is to add this to your ~/.gitconfig "

[core]
    pager = less -R