[How To] set vim as GIT editor

Using Vim as the default text editor for Git is a popular choice, as it is a powerful and highly customizable text editor that is often used by developers. To set Vim as the default editor for Git, you will need to set the core.editor configuration variable to vim.

You can change the default editor used by Git by setting the core.editor configuration variable to the path of the editor you want to use. To set the editor to Vim, you can use the following command:

git config --global core.editor "vim"

This will set the core.editor variable for your global Git configuration, so it will be used for all of your Git repositories. If you want to set the editor for a specific repository, you can run the command in the repository’s root directory.

Alternatively, you can also set the GIT_EDITOR environment variable to vim in your shell profile (e.g., ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc), which will make Git use Vim as the default editor for all Git commands.

export GIT_EDITOR=vim

It’s important to note that you need to have the ‘vim’ installed on your machine and it should be available in the PATH of your system. Vim is available for all major operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and Windows. Installing Vim usually requires only a few commands, depending on your operating system.

Once Vim is installed, you can customize it to your preferences by editing the configuration files. For example, you can add your own shortcuts, color schemes, and other settings. The configuration files are located in the ~/.vim directory on Linux, or the ~/vimfiles directory on Windows. You can find more information on customizing Vim in the official documentation.