My default editor is pico at my server. I use Bash and Linux.
I tried to change Vim to be my default editor unsuccessfully by
echo vim > $EDITOR
How can I change Vim my default editor?
[edit]
The following code does not work in .bashrc
export EDITOR='vim'
I don't have an EDITOR environmental variable. Perhaps you could specify your distribution? My bashrc does define this:
alias vi='vim'
and supposedly if vim can't find a file called .vimrc in your home directory it runs in "compatibility mode" and you only get vi features until you say type :nocp
If it is based on your EDITOR environmental variable you would set it like this in BASH:
export EDITOR='vim'
Adding
export EDITOR=vim
to your .bashrc should really do the trick. (There a no quotes necessary and, depending on what quotes you used, they may be the cause for your problem.)
You must open a new shell (or enter source .bashrc at the prompt) after modifying .bashrc for the modification to take effect.
What is the program from which you want vim to be started?
EDIT: I haven't used git, but the documentation (http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-commit.html) reads ``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).''
So check whether one of these variables is set:
echo $GIT_EDITOR $VISUAL $EDITOR
git config --get-all core.editor
For me,
export VISUAL=vim
solved the problem.
Since none of these answers are helping me:
Here is what the git docs are saying: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-commit.html
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).
Here is the BASH man page excerpt on export (brackets are optional):
export [-fn] [name[=word]]