How do I get git to use Textmate as my default editor?

Question

At the command-line, if I do mate <filepath> it opens up the right file for me in TextMate.

But when I do:

$ mate -v
open: invalid option -- v
Usage: open [-e] [-t] [-f] [-W] [-R] [-n] [-g] [-h] [-b <bundle identifier>] [-a <application>] [filenames] [--args arguments]

Also, when I do git commit, I see this:

$ git commit
error: cannot run mate: No such file or directory
error: There was a problem with the editor 'mate'.
Please supply the message using either -m or -F option.

My ~/.bashprofile has these lines:

#Set Textmate as my default editor from the command-line
alias mate='open -a TextMate.app'

export EDITOR="/usr/local/bin/mate -w"

And ~/.bashrc has just this one:

alias mate='open -a TextMate.app'

Edit 1

My ~/.gitconfig includes the following:

[user]
    name = My Name
    email = myemail@address.com
[core]
    editor = mate
[github]
    user = marcamillion
    token = 50e3iuaidsgadjkhwkjegakjhbsdkjb30432 (don't worry, this is fake)

Help!

Answer 1

By adding the following to the core section in ~/.gitconfig

[core]
    editor = mate

Update: Ok if it's already there then the issue is probably with textmate and not git.

Textmate 2:

In preferences there is a terminal tab and an install button When you click on install mate will be in /usr/local/bin/mate and everything should work.

Textmate 1:

You need to create a symbolic link http://manual.macromates.com/en/using_textmate_from_terminal.html

I have textmate 1 (I use vim now :)

ls -l `which mate`

lrwxr-xr-x  1 jameskyburz  staff  66 Jul  1  2011 /usr/local/bin/mate -> /Applications/TextMate.app/Contents/SharedSup

ln -s /Applications/TextMate.app/Contents/Resources/mate /usr/local/bin/mate

Answer 2

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).

Easy way to configure this, assuming the mate path is correct, is to run

git config --global core.editor "/usr/local/bin/mate -w"

Assuming, of course, that you can run /usr/local/bin/mate -w. Check that by running /usr/local/bin/mate -w with your local user. If it isn't found, you can use which mate to find it if it exists in your path at all - if it doesn't, I'd think you need to use the form you have in your alias (open -a TextMate.app -w).

Edit: incorporated comments into the answer.