How do I make Git use the editor of my choice for commits

Question

I would prefer to write my commit messages in Vim  but it is opening them in Emacs   How do I configure Git to always use Vim   Note that I want to do this globally  not just for a single project

User · Answer

Just because I came here looking for a one-time solution (in my case, I usually use vim but this one time I wanted to use VS Code) for a single command and others might want to know as well:

GIT_EDITOR='code -w' git rebase -i …

Here's my git/hub version just for context:

git version 2.24.2 (Apple Git-127)
hub version 2.14.1

User · Answer

there is a list of commad that you can use but for vs code use this  git config --global core editor  quot code --wait quot   this is the link for all editor  https   git-scm com book en v2 Appendix-C 3A-Git-Commands-Setup-and-Config

User · Answer

Windows  setting notepad as the default commit message editor  git config --global core editor notepad exe   Hit Ctrl S to save your commit message  To discard  just close the notepad window without saving   In case you hit the shortcut for save  then decide to abort  go to File- Save as  and in the dialog that opens  change  Save as type  to  All files         You will see a file named  COMMIT EDITMSG   Delete it  and close notepad window    Edit  Alternatively  and more easily  delete all the contents from the open notepad window and hit save   thanks mwfearnley for the comment    I think for small write-ups such as commit messages notepad serves best  because it is simple  is there with windows  opens up in no time  Even your sublime may take a second or two to get fired up when you have a load of plugins and stuff

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For Windows users who want to use Kinesics Text Editor  Create a file called  k sh   add the following text and place in your home directory       winpty  C  Program Files  x86  Kinesics Text Editor x64 k exe   1   At the git prompt type   git config --global core editor   k sh

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And if you are working with designers using the command line then Pico  and dont know short cuts     git config --global core editor  pico    Or  export VISUAL pico export EDITOR pico

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For emacs users   emacs    server-start    shellrc   export EDITOR emacsclient

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For MAC  BBEdit  First  open BBEdit  click on the BBEdit logo  and choose Install Command-Line Tools  Then from the command line  git config --global core editor  quot BBEdit -w quot

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For Mac nbsp OS nbsp X  using TextEdit or the natural environmental editor for text   git config --global core editor  open -W -n

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For Textmate Users  This opens Textmate editor in when you want to edit your commits  Requires textmate command line tools to be installed   git config --global core editor  mate -w

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To make vim the default editor for git on ubuntu 20 04 run the following command   git config --global core editor vim

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For Windows  Neovim     gitconfig   core      editor  C  tools neovim Neovim bin nvim-qt exe

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On macOS Big Sur  11 0  beta for TextMate  none of the environment variable options worked   Set all three  GIT EDITOR  VISUAL  and EDITOR   Finally set the global core editor in git  and that worked  git config --global core editor  quot   bin mate -w quot

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For Windows users who want to use neovim with the Windows Subsystem for Linux   git config core editor  C  Windows system32 bash exe --login -c  nvim  git COMMIT EDITMSG     This is not a fool-proof solution as it doesn t handle interactive rebasing  for example   Improvements very welcome

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If you want to set the editor only for Git  do either  you don   t need both    Set core editor in your Git config  git config --global core editor  quot vim quot  Set the GIT EDITOR environment variable  export GIT EDITOR vim   If you want to set the editor for Git and also other programs  set the standardized VISUAL and EDITOR environment variables   export VISUAL vim export EDITOR  quot  VISUAL quot     Setting both is not necessarily needed  but some programs may not use the more-correct VISUAL  See VISUAL vs  EDITOR   Some editors require a --wait flag  or they will open a blank page  For example   Sublime Text  if correctly set up  or use the full path to the executable in place of subl   export VISUAL  quot subl --wait quot   VS Code  after adding the shell command   export VISUAL  quot code --wait quot

User · Answer

In windows 7  while adding the  quot Sublime quot  editor it was still giving me an error   Aborting commit due to empty commit message   Sublime was not able to keep the focus  To fix this I opened the  gitconfig file in c  users username  folder and added the following line with --wait option outside the single quotes   core        editor    F  Program Files Sublime Text 2 sublime text exe  --wait  Hope its helpful to somebody facing similar issue with Sublime

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Atom as your git editor git config --global core editor  quot atom --wait quot    Atom needs to be configured to run from the command line for the above to work  OS X  install shell commands from Atom  menu bar  gt  Atom  gt  Install Shell Commands Windows  no action required - atom is configured to run from the command line by default

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On Ubuntu and also Debian  thanks  MichielB  changing the default editor is also possible by running    sudo update-alternatives --config editor   Which will prompt the following   There are 4 choices for the alternative editor  providing  usr bin editor      Selection    Path                Priority   Status ------------------------------------------------------------   0             bin nano            40        auto mode   1             bin ed             -100       manual mode   2             bin nano            40        manual mode   3             usr bin vim basic   30        manual mode   4             usr bin vim tiny    10        manual mode  Press enter to keep the current choice     or type selection number

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Just try EDITOR vim git commit    Or you can set your EDITOR to vim by export EDITOR vim in your bashrc

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For users of TextWrangler from the Mac app store   git config --global core editor  open -n -W -a TextWrangler    Also  make sure your  TextWrangler   Preferences   Application   When TextWrangler becomes active   setting is set to  Do nothing   This works for me on OS X 10 11 4 with TextWrangler 5 0 2 from the Mac app store   Explanation   The -n means open in a new instance   The -W means to wait until the application exits before using the contents of the edited file as the commit message   The -a TextWrangler means use the TextWrangler application to open the file   See man open in your Mac Terminal app for more details

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Copy paste this  git config --global core editor  quot vim quot   In case you d like to know what you re doing  From man git-commit   ENVIRONMENT AND CONFIGURATION VARIABLES The editor used to edit the commit log message will be chosen from the GIT EDITOR environment variable  the core editor configuration variable  the VISUAL environment variable  or the EDITOR environment variable  in that order

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Setting Sublime Text 2 as Git commit editor in Mac OSX 10  Run this command     git config --global core editor   Applications Sublime  Text  2 app Contents SharedSupport bin subl    Or just     git config --global core editor  subl -w

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For EmEditor users To set EmEditor as the default text editor for Git  open Git Bash  and type  git config --global core editor  quot emeditor exe -sp quot  EmEditor v19 9 2 or later required

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When using git-review I had to modify sequence editor value to be able to do interactive rebase  git rebase -i -p    git config --global sequence editor  gvim     or whatever your prefer   gvim require  apt install vim-gtk  References    2944 Interactive Rebase failed with warning   Vim  Warning  Output is not to a terminal   Install section of sjurba rebase-editor

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Mvim as your git editor  Like all the other GUI applications  you have to launch mvim with the wait flag   git config --global core editor  mvim --remote-wait

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In Windows 7  setting editor to Notepad    Open any text editor  Open this file  C  Users YOUR USERNAME  gitconfig Add this section to the bottom    For 64 bit Notepad   use   core      editor    C  Program Files Notepad   notepad   exe  -multiInst -notabbar  For 32 bit Notepad   use   core      editor    C  Program Files  x86  Notepad   notepad   exe  -multiInst -notabbar   Save and close the file  When you re committing with git  just write git commit and press Enter  It will pop open Notepad    Write your commit message at the top of the file  and save and close the file  Done

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This provides an answer for people who arrive at this Question that may want to link an editor other than vim   The linked resource  by Github is likely to be kept up to date  when editors are updated  even if answers on SO  including this one  are not   Associating Text Editors with git    Github s post shows exactly what to type in to your command line for various editors  including the options flags specific to each editor for it to work best with git     Notepad    git config --global core editor   C  Program Files  x86  Notepad   notepad   exe  -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin   Sublime Text  git config --global core editor   c  Program Files sublime text 3 subl exe  -w   Atom  git config --global core editor  atom --wait   The commands above assume your editor has been installed in the default directory for a windows machine   The commands basically add the text between double-quotes to  gitconfig in your home directory  On a windows machine home is likely to be C  Users your-user-name  where your-user-name is your login name  From the command line  you can reach this directory by typing in cd     for example  a command above would be add the following line under the  core  section like so   core          editor    C  Program Files sublime text 3 subl exe  -w   If you have a different editor  just replace with the path to your editor  using either method above   and hope no flags are needed for optimal usage

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Best settings for Sublime Text 3 as your Git editor  Windows  amp  Linux instructions   To follow these instructions in Windows make sure you have installed Git for Windows  In Windows  I like to use Git Bash so that it feels more like Linux  First  we want to create a special Sublime Text project so that we can specify special project settings we want set whenever Git calls the editor  to make things easier when editing in Git  For example  I normally set my ruler to 120 chars in most projects  but for Git commit messages I want it to be 72 characters so that it fits nicely in a terminal when you call git log or git lg   1  Create a Sublime Text project with settings we want to use to edit Git commit messages Open Sublime Text and go to menu  quot File quot     quot New Window quot  to create a new anonymous project  Go to menu  quot Project quot     quot Save Project As    quot  and choose a place to save it  In Linux I saved it in my Linux home directory with the file name  gitconfig sublime-project  Its path is therefore     gitconfig sublime-project  In Windows also save it in your home directory  for example  C  Users MY USER NAME  gitconfig sublime-project  Now go to menu  quot Project quot     quot Edit Project quot  to edit the project settings  Paste the following and save the settings  Make any further edits for your project settings if desired           For folder settings help see here  https   www sublimetext com docs 3 projects html       quot folders quot                       quot settings quot                     Disables horizontal scrolling if enabled             May be set to true  false  or  quot auto quot   where it will be disabled for            source code  and otherwise enabled           quot word wrap quot   false              Set to a value other than 0 to force wrapping at that column rather than the            window width          quot wrap width quot   0              Columns in which to display vertical rulers          quot rulers quot    72  50     72 is recommended by git for commit message content  and 50 for commit titles             The number of spaces a tab is considered equal to          quot tab size quot   4              Set to true to insert spaces when tab is pressed          quot translate tabs to spaces quot   true               quot build systems quot                     2  Set the editor to be used by Git Now we need to set the editor to be used by Git  by editing the  gitconfig file  For Linux  Your user copy of this will be located in    gitconfig  Open this file and add the following lines  Be sure to use the proper path name to the Git project you just created above  I m using    gitconfig sublime-project   core      editor   subl --project    gitconfig sublime-project --wait  The --wait is important  as it forces Git to wait until you close the file before it continues on  The --project line is important to tell Sublime Text which project you want opened whenever Git opens Sublime Text  Per  digitaldreamer s answer above  https   stackoverflow com a 2596835 4561887    quot subl can be replaced by the full path of the executable but  the alias subl  is usually available when  Sublime is  correctly installed  quot  For Windows  For Windows  first read the Linux instructions for background information  Now we will do something almost identical   OPTIONAL  create a subl alias for use in Git Bash   Open up a text editor  for example  Notepad  Notepad    Sublime Text  Geany  etc    and create a file called  quot  bash profile quot  in your home directory  Its path will therefore be  C  Users MY USER NAME  bash profile  Save the following into it  alias subl  quot  c Program  Files Sublime  Text  3 subl exe quot   This creates a Git Bash alias called subl that we can now use in Git Bash for Windows  to easily open Sublime Text  This step isn t required  but it s useful for general Git Bash use  Now you can call subl    for instance  in Git Bash to open up a new Sublime Text project in your current directory   MANDATORY   Edit the  gitconfig file found in your home directory  C  Users MY USER NAME  gitconfig  by adding the following to it  Notice the subtle changes from the Linux instructions above   core    editor    C  Program Files Sublime Text 3 subl exe  --project    gitconfig sublime-project --wait   Notice that you must specify the full path to the Sublime Text executable  Note the direction of the slashes  Use   NOT   to separate folders in the path name   Thanks VonC for helping me see this   Our subl alias we made for Git Bash above doesn t work here  so you can t use it like we did in the Linux example  instead you must specify the whole path as shown above  The   symbol  however  does still work here to get to your Windows home directory    2 5   Optional  Install the  quot Git quot  package into Sublime Text 3  This gives you syntax highlighting for git commit messages  as well as access to other Git commands such as git blame  which I use frequently in Sublime Text  or git commit  which I don t use in Sublime Text since I d prefer the command-line for general Git flow  as I ve mentioned in my comments below this answer   To install a package  First  ensure    Package Control    is installed  Next  press Ctrl   Shift   P  same as Tools   Command Palette  and type all or part of    Package Control  Install Package     then press Enter  In the search box that comes up  search for the package  quot Git quot  and hit Enter on it  or click on it  to automatically install it  Once installed  Ctrl   Shift   P then searching for  quot git quot  will bring up Git commands you can use internally inside Sublime Text now  such as git blame   3  Use it Now when you call git commit  for instance  as normal from the command-line  Sublime Text will open up into the  gitconfig sublime-project we created above  with that project s settings  As you type a paragraph you ll notice it extends past the ruler we set since soft word-wrap is off  To force hard wrap via auto-inserted hard-returns at the end of each line  put your cursor on the long line you want auto-wrapped and press Alt   Q  It will now hard-wrap hard-fold at 72 characters  which is what we set in the project settings   quot rulers quot  parameter above  Now  save your commit message with Ctrl   S  and exit  to complete your git commit  with Ctrl   Shift   W  Done  Related   Git mergetool with Meld on Windows https   github com ElectricRCAircraftGuy eRCaGuy dotfiles

User · Answer

For IntelliJ users   When i was trying to git rebase i was getting the following error    hint  Waiting for your editor to close the file    code -n -w  code  command not found error  There was a problem with the editor  code -n -w      The same error showed up when i was trying to associate IntelliJ with Git    The problem was that I did not have the command code added in my environment PATH variable  And i didn t want to use Visual Studio Code from my terminal  So that is why it prompted  command not found   I solved this by deleting      editor   code -n -w   from the core section in my  gitconfig file  Git worked properly again

User · Answer

To Make Visual Studio Code  vscode  your default git editor  git config --global core editor  code --wait

[git] How do I make Git use the editor of my choice for commits?

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