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

Update September 2015 (6 years later)

The last release of git-for-Windows (2.5.3) now includes:

By configuring git config core.editor notepad, users can now use notepad.exe as their default editor.
Configuring git config format.commitMessageColumns 72 will be picked up by the notepad wrapper and line-wrap the commit message after the user edits it.

See commit 69b301b by Johannes Schindelin (dscho).

And Git 2.16 (Q1 2018) will show a message to tell the user that it is waiting for the user to finish editing when spawning an editor, in case the editor opens to a hidden window or somewhere obscure and the user gets lost.

See commit abfb04d (07 Dec 2017), and commit a64f213 (29 Nov 2017) by Lars Schneider (larsxschneider).
Helped-by: Junio C Hamano (gitster).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 0c69a13, 19 Dec 2017)}

launch_editor(): indicate that Git waits for user input

When a graphical GIT_EDITOR is spawned by a Git command that opens and waits for user input (e.g. "git rebase -i"), then the editor window might be obscured by other windows.
The user might be left staring at the original Git terminal window without even realizing that s/he needs to interact with another window before Git can proceed. To this user Git appears hanging.

Print a message that Git is waiting for editor input in the original terminal and get rid of it when the editor returns, if the terminal supports erasing the last line

Original answer

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 gives:

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. Note the direction of the slashes! Use / NOT \ to separate folders in the path name!

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

Or if you are in a 64 bit system:

git config --global core.editor \
"'C:/Program Files (x86)/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)

lightfire228 adds in the comments:

For anyone having an issue where N++ just opens a blank file, and git doesn't take your commit message, see "Aborting commit due to empty message": change your .bat or .sh file to say:

"<path-to-n++" .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG -<arguments>. 

That will tell notepad++ to open the temp commit file, rather than a blank new one.

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.

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.

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 environment variable 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

For Atom you can do

git config --global core.editor "atom --wait"

and similar for Visual Studio Code

git config --global core.editor "code --wait"

which will open up an Atom or Visual Studio Code window for you to commit through,

or for Sublime Text:

git config --global core.editor "subl -n -w"

Vim/gVim works well for me.

>echo %EDITOR%

c:\Vim\Vim71\vim.exe

I needed to do both of the following to get Git to launch Notepad++ in Windows:

• Add the following to .gitconfig:

  editor = 'C:/Program Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe' -multiInst -notabbar -nosession -noPlugin
  

• Modify the shortcut to launch the Git Bash shell to run as administrator, and then use that to launch the Git Bash shell. I was guessing that the context menu entry "Git Bash here" was not launching Notepad++ with the required permissions.

After doing both of the above, it worked.

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 X Window.

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

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.

I've had difficulty getting Git to cooperate with WordPad, Komodo Edit 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 i.e.

git commit -m "Fixed the LoadAll method"

to keep things moving. It 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.

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

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

to add sublime git config --global core.editor "'C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 3\sublime_text.exe'"

I solved a similar issue using GIT_EDITOR variable and notepad2 as editor.

Solution 1: Set the environment variable GIT_EDITOR to C:/tools/notepad2.exe. This works nicely, but git complains if the commit message has non-ASCII characters.

Solution 2: Set GIT_EDITOR to C:/tools/notepad2.exe //utf8. Notice the double slash in front of the program switch. BTW: -utf8 would have worked as well.

Those of you using Git on Windows: What tool do you use to edit your commit messages, and what did you have to do to make it work?

The tool that I find the most useful as both my git editor and my general-purpose code editor, in both Windows and Linux, is Sublime Text 3. It works really well, but requires a little bit of setup to get it just right, so I've fully documented that fully here:

• How do I make Git use the editor of my choice for commits? - Best settings for Sublime Text 3 as your Git editor (Windows & Linux instructions)

Side note about my main editor: for big projects I use Eclipse as my primary editor, and Sublime Text 3 as my git editor and additional file editor when I need to make use of its advanced features such as multi-cursor mode, vertical/column selection mode, etc. For small to medium projects I use just Sublime Text 3 by itself. For setup instructions for Eclipse, see my PDF document here.

Say you want to configure VsCode to be your editor. Do the following:

Add the following lines to your .gitconfig file:

The default location of .gitconfig file is C:\Users\USER_NAME\.gitconfig

[core]
  editor = code -w -n
[diff]
  tool = vscode
[difftool "vscode"]
  cmd = code -w -n --diff $LOCAL $REMOTE
[merge]
  tool = vscode
[mergetool "vscode"]
  cmd = code -w -n $MERGED

NOTE:

• -w is mandatory, and tells git to wait for vscode to load.
• -n is optional, and tells git to open vscode in a new-window.

In case you want to configure a custom path to the editor in Windows:

You need to replace the word code with Path to '.exe' of VsCode.

For example:

[core]
  editor = "'C:/Users/Tal/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/Code.exe'" -w -n
[diff]
  tool = vscode
[difftool "vscode"]
  cmd = "'C:/Users/Tal/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/Code.exe'" -w -n --diff $LOCAL $REMOTE
[merge]
  tool = vscode
[mergetool "vscode"]
  cmd = "'C:/Users/Tal/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/Code.exe'" -w -n $MERGED

Note:

• You need to surround the path with single-quotes ''.
• The slashes in the path should be forward-slashes /.

Or another example:

[core]
    editor = \"C:\\Users\\Tal\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\Code.exe\" -w -n

[diff]
    tool = vscode
[difftool "vscode"]
    cmd = \"C:\\Users\\Tal\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\Code.exe\" -w -n --diff $LOCAL $REMOTE

[merge]
    tool = vscode
[mergetool "vscode"]
    cmd = \"C:\\Users\\Tal\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\Code.exe\" -w -n $MERGED

UPDATE:

VsCode supports now "3-way merges"! The update was done in versions 1.69.0 and 1.70.0. So now you can enable the VsCode "mergetool" to view 3-way merges.

To do so, you need to update the line:

[mergetool "vscode"]
      cmd = code -w -n $MERGED

with the new line:

[mergetool "vscode"]
      cmd = code -w -n --merge $REMOTE $LOCAL $BASE $MERGED