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 EDITOR defined. Please supply the message using either -m or -F option.

So I figured out I need to have an environment variable called EDITOR. No problem. I set it to point to Notepad.

That worked, almost. The default commit message opens in Notepad. But Notepad doesn't support bare line feeds.

I went out and got Notepad++. But I can't figure out how to get Notepad++ set up as the %EDITOR% in such a way that it works with Git as expected.

I'm not married to Notepad++. At this point I couldn't care less what editor I use. I just want to be able to type my commit messages without using -m.

So, for those of you using Git on Windows: What (free) tool do you use to edit your commit message, and what do you get when you type echo %EDITOR% at the command prompt?

Answer 1

I've had difficulty getting git to cooperate with wordpad, KomodoEdit and pretty much every other editor I give it. Most open for editing, but git clearly doesn't wait for the save/close to happen.

As a crutch, I've just been doing a

git commit -m "Fixed the LoadAll method"

to keep things moving. Tends to keep my commit messages a little shorter than they probably should be, but clearly there's some work to be done on the Windows version of git.

The GitGUI also isn't that bad. It takes a little bit of orientation, but after that, it works fairly well.

Answer 2

Notepad++ works just fine, although I choose to stick with Notepad, -m, or even sometimes the built-in "edit."

The problem you are encountering using Notepad++ is related to how git is launching the editor executable. My solution to this is to set EDITOR to a batch file, rather than the actual editor executable, that does the following:

start /WAIT "E:\PortableApps\Notepad++Portable\Notepad++Portable.exe" %*

/WAIT tells the command line session to halt until the application exits, thus you will be able to edit to your heart's content while git happily waits for you. %* passes all arguments to the batch file through to Notepad++.

c:\src>echo %EDITOR%
c:\tools\runeditor.bat

Answer 3

Vim/Gvim works well for me.

>echo %EDITOR%

c:\Vim\Vim71\vim.exe

Answer 4

It seems as if Git won't find the editor if there are spaces in the path. So you will have to put the batch file mentioned in Patrick's answer into a non-whitespace path.

Answer 5

I just tested it with git version 1.6.2.msysgit.0.186.gf7512 and Notepad++5.3.1

I prefer to not have to set an EDITOR variable, so I tried:

git config --global core.editor "\"c:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe\""
or
git config --global core.editor "\"c:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe\" %*"

That always give:

C:\prog\git>git config --global --edit
"c:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe" %*: c:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe: command not found
error: There was a problem with the editor '"c:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe" %*'.

If I define a npp.bat including:

"c:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe" %*

and I type:

C:\prog\git>git config --global core.editor C:\prog\git\npp.bat

It just works from the DOS session, but not from the git shell.
(not that with the core.editor configuration mechanism, a script with "start /WAIT..." in it would not work, but only open a new DOS window)

---

Bennett's answer mentions the possibility to avoid adding a script, but to reference directly the program itself between simple quotes:

git config --global core.editor "'C:/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe' -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin"

But I prefer using a script (see below): that way I can play with different paths or different options without having to register again a git config.

---

The actual solution (with a script) was to realize that:
what you refer to in the config file is actually a shell (/bin/sh) script, not a DOS script.

So what does work is:

C:\prog\git>git config --global core.editor C:/prog/git/npp.bat

with C:/prog/git/npp.bat:

#!/bin/sh
"c:/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe" -multiInst "$*"

or

#!/bin/sh
"c:/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe" -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin "$*"

With that setting, I can do 'git config --global --edit' from DOS or Git Shell, or I can do 'git rebase -i ...' from DOS or Git Shell.
Bot commands will trigger a new instance of notepad++ (hence the -multiInst' option), and wait for that instance to be closed before going on.

Note that I use only '/', not \'. And I installed msysgit using option 2. (Add the git\bin directory to the PATH environment variable, but without overriding some built-in windows tools)

The fact that the notepad++ wrapper is called .bat is not important.
It would be better to name it 'npp.sh' and to put it in the [git]\cmd directory though (or in any directory referenced by your PATH environment variable).

---

See also:

• How do I view ‘git diff’ output with visual diff program? for the general theory
• How do I setup DiffMerge with msysgit / gitk? for another example of external tool (DiffMerge, and WinMerge)

Answer 6

Sorry peeps, I'm new to answering on StackOverflow - getting confused over who answered this and who edited that, lol.

Anyway, I've just been playing around with this and found the following to work nicely for me:

git config --global core.editor "'C:/Program Files/TextPad 5/TextPad.exe' -m"

I don't think CMD likes single-quotes so you must use double quotes "to specify the space embedded string argument".

Cygwin (which I believe is the underlying platform for Git's Bash) on the other hand likes both ' and "; you can specify a CMD-like paths, using / instead of \, so long as the string is quoted i.e. in this instance, using single-quotes.

The -m overrides/indicates the use of multiple editors and there is no need for a %* tacked on the end.

Cheers Darren

Answer 7

I use Cygwin on Windows, so I use

export EDITOR="emacs -nw"

the "-nw" is for "no-windows", i.e. tell emacs not to try and use X11

The emacs keybindings don't work for me from a Windows shell, so I would only use this from a Cygwin shell... (rxvt recommended)

Answer 8

I've just had the same problem and found a different solution. I was getting

error: There was a problem with the editor 'ec'

I've got VISUAL=ec, and a batch file called ec.bat on my path that contains one line:

c:\emacs\emacs-23.1\bin\emacsclient.exe %*

This lets me edit files from the command line with ec <filename>, and having visual set means most unixy programs pick it up too. Git seems to search the path differently to my other commands though - when I looked at a git commit in ProcMon I saw it look in every folder on the path for ec and for ec.exe, but not for ec.bat. I added another environment variable (GIT_EDITOR=ec.bat) and all was fine.

Answer 9

Building on Darren's answer, to use Notepad++ you can simply do this:

git config --global core.editor "'C:/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe' -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin"

Works like a charm for me.

Answer 10

I also use Cygwin on Windows, but with gvim (as opposed to the terminal-based vim).

To make this work, I have done the following:

1. Created a one-line batch file (named git_editor.bat) which contains the following:
   "C:/Program Files/Vim/vim72/gvim.exe" --nofork "%*"
2. Placed git_editor.bat on in my PATH.
3. Set GIT_EDITOR=git_editor.bat

With this done, git commit, etc. will correctly invoke the gvim executable.

NOTE 1: The --nofork option to gvim insures that it blocks until the commit message has been written.

NOTE 2: The quotes around the path to gvim is required if you have spaces in the path.

NOTE 3: The quotes around "%*" are needed just in case git passes a file path with spaces.

Answer 11

I had PortableGit 1.6 working fine but after upgrading to PortableGit-1.7 windows release had problems. Some of the git commands opens up Notepad++.exe fine but some don't, especially git rebase behaves differently.

Problem is some commands run windows cmd process some use unix cmd process. I want to give startup attributes to Notepad++ editor so need to have a customized script. My solution is this.

1) Create a script to run an appropriate text editor. Script looks weird but handles both windows and unix variation. c:/PortableGit/cmd/git-editor.bat

#!/bin/sh
#open a new instance

function doUnix() {
  "c:\program files\notepad++\notepad++.exe" -multiInst -nosession -notabbar $*
  exit
}

doUnix $*

:WINCALL
"c:\program files\notepad++\notepad++.exe" -multiInst -nosession -notabbar %*

2) Set global core.editor variable Script was saved to git/cmd folder so its already in a gitconsole path, this is mandatory as full path may not work properly.

git config --global core.editor "git-editor.bat"

Now I can run git commit -a and git rebase -i master commands. Give it a try if you have problems in Git windows tool.

Answer 12

this is all fine and dandy but AFTER you get this setup IE

[core] editor = 'C:/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe'

how do you access the notepad++ ... like in the examples ive seen theres a command like

mate .gitignore

where "mate" is a established shortcut to the editing program ... in this case "TextMate"

... how do i get this to work for notepad++?

Answer 13

I prefer to use emacs. Getting it set up can be a little tricky.

1. Download emacs and unpack it somewhere like c:\emacs.
2. Run c:\emacs\bin\addpm.exe. You need to right-click and "Run as Administrator" if you are using Windows Vista or above. This will put the executables in your path.
3. Add (server-start) somewhere in your .emacs file. See the Emacs Windows FAQ for advice on where to put your .emacs file.
4. git config --global core.editor emacsclientw

Git will now open files within an existing emacs process. You will have to run that existing process manually from c:\emacs\bin\runemacs.exe.

Answer 14

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 15

This is my setup to use Geany as an editor for git:

git config --global core.editor C:/path/to/geany.bat

with the following content in geany.bat :

#!/bin/sh
"C:\Program Files\Geany\bin\Geany.exe" --new-instance "$*"

It works in both DOS console and msysgit.

Answer 16

i have a very simple question:

gedit is my default (commit) editor. in the terminal, when i type 'git commit -a', it is opened; then i type a commit message using gedit, save it, but git doesn't effectively commits!

so, when i type 'git status', it doesn't show me 'nothing to commit' message...

what should i do, in order to fix this problem?