xargs with command that open editor leaves shell in weird state

Question

I tried to make an alias for committing several different git projects. I tried something like

cat projectPaths | \\
xargs -I project git --git-dir=project/.gi         


        

Answer 1

The man page for GNU xargs shows a similar command for emacs:

xargs sh -c 'emacs "$@" < /dev/tty' emacs

(in this command, the second "emacs" is the "dummy string" that wisbucky refers to in a comment to this answer)

and says this:

   Launches  the  minimum  number of copies of Emacs needed, one after the
   other, to edit the files listed on xargs' standard input.  This example
   achieves the same effect as BSD's -o option, but in a more flexible and
   portable way.

Another thing to try is using -a instead of cat:

xargs -a projectPaths -I project git --git-dir=project/.git --work-tree=project commit -a

or some combination of the two.