How can I set up an editor to work with Git on Windows?

Question

I\'m trying out Git on Windows. I got to the point of trying \"git commit\" and I got this error:

Terminal is dumb but no VISUAL nor

Answer 1

Edit: After updating to Vim 7.3, I've come to the conclusion that the cleanest and easiest way to do this is:

1. Add Vim's main folder to your path (right click on My Computer → Properties → Advanced → Environment Variables)

2. Run this:

   git config --global core.editor "gvim --nofork '%*'"
   

If you do it this way, then I am fairly sure it will work with Cygwin as well.

Original answer:

Even with a couple of Vim-related answers, I was having trouble getting this to work with gVim under Windows (while not using a batch file or %EDITOR% or Cygwin).

What I eventually arrived at is nice and clean, and draws from a few of the solutions here:

git config --global core.editor \
"'C:/Program Files/Vim/vim72/gvim.exe' --nofork '%*'"

One gotcha that took me a while is these are not the Windows-style backslashes. They are normal forward slashes.

Answer 2

WordPad!

I'm happy using Vim, but since I'm trying to introduce Git to the company I wanted something that we'd all have, and found that WordPad seems to work okay (i.e. Git does wait until you're finished editing and close the window).

git config core.editor '"C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe"'

That's using Git Bash on msysgit; I've not tried from the Windows command prompt (if that makes any difference).

Answer 3

I found a a beautifully simple solution posted here - although there may be a mistake in the path in which you have to copy over the "subl" file given by the author.

I am running Windows 7 x64, and I had to put the "subl" file in my /Git/cmd/ folder to make it work.

It works like a charm, though.

Answer 4

I use Git on multiple platforms, and I like to use the same Git settings on all of them. (In fact, I have all my configuration files under release control with Git, and put a Git repository clone on each machine.) The solution I came up with is this:

I set my editor to giteditor

git config --global core.editor giteditor

Then I create a symbolic link called giteditor which is in my PATH. (I have a personal bin directory, but anywhere in the PATH works.) That link points to my current editor of choice. On different machines and different platforms, I use different editors, so this means that I don't have to change my universal Git configuration (.gitconfig), just the link that giteditor points to.

Symbolic links are handled by every operating system I know of, though they may use different commands. For Linux, you use ln -s. For Windows, you use the cmd built-in mklink. They have different syntaxes (which you should look up), but it all works the same way, really.

Answer 5

This is working for me using Cygwin and TextPad 6 (EDIT: it is also working with TextPad 5 as long as you make the obvious change to the script), and presumably the model could be used for other editors as well:

File ~/.gitconfig:

[core]
    editor = ~/script/textpad.sh

File ~/script/textpad.sh:

#!/bin/bash

APP_PATH=`cygpath "c:/program files (x86)/textpad 6/textpad.exe"`
FILE_PATH=`cygpath -w $1`

"$APP_PATH" -m "$FILE_PATH"

This one-liner works as well:

File ~/script/textpad.sh (option 2):

"`cygpath "c:/program files (x86)/textpad 6/textpad.exe"`" -m "`cygpath -w $1`"

Answer 6

I managed to get the environment version working by setting the EDITOR variable using quotes and /:

EDITOR="c:/Program Files (x86)/Notepad++/notepad++.exe"