Re: default editor

From: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Date: Feb 7, 2021, 17:35 UTC
Message-ID: <YCAk8Zx8KvZhaJMx@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAKH6PiWS5DvqctFnvZ+uyOzBs75hcy9HzbW_3gUCu+RE+oOYyw@mail.gmail.com>

On 2021-02-07 at 13:24:07, M Douglas McIlroy wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> While downloading git, I was asked to name a default editor, which I
> did: ed. from cygwin. It worked in the enuing test, but was rejected
> because it returned an error. I suppose this is because
> cygwin return  conventions are those of Unix, not Windows. That raises
> the question: does it matter? Does any other part of git depend on the
> editor's return value?

First of all, I don't use Windows and this sounds like a Windows-specific problem, so you may have more help at the Git for Windows issue tracker. But I'll try to help anyway.

At the command line, what does "git var GIT_EDITOR" print? Is it "/usr/bin/ed" or the like? Or is it something like "/c/..."? Also, what is the exact error message you receive from trying to run your command (copy and paste)?

The reason I ask is that Git for Windows ships with a POSIX-like environment called MSYS, and as such, Unix-style paths are interpreted according to that. So to specify a path for Cygwin, you'd need to specify it as a Unix-style path under /c (or /d, or whatever drive) so that it could be invoked as a normal Windows program and not something relative to the MSYS environment. However, the path is handed off to the shell, so it needs to be in a form that uses slashes.

I don't think the return value is the problem. Both Unix and Windows return 0 on success and nonzero on error, and Git will interpret editor return codes that way.

-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Houston, Texas, US