Git commit in terminal opens VIM, but can't get back to terminal

git vim terminal command-line-interface commit
Leon Gaban picture Leon Gaban · Nov 22, 2012 · Viewed 185.8k times · Source

Trying to learn GitHub at the moment and doing this Git essentials tutorial over at nettuts. I'm on the lesson about making commits.

The teacher types git commit and it opens VIM as his editor (I'd also like to know how to make it open up in Sublime Text 2 instead) anyways it opens in VIM and I add in 1 line saying this is my first commit and hit save.

Next it then prompts me to save the output to the desktop, something I did not see in his screencast. Now I'm still in VIM and not sure how to get back to 'normal' terminal :(

I couldn't figure it out so I just exited the terminal and relaunched it, did git commit again and had some warning messages about duplicates! Not sure if I need to (E)edit anyways or (A)abort.

git status

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vim

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message when I reopen terminal and do git commit again

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Answer

Gille picture Gille · Nov 22, 2012

To save your work and exit press Esc and then :wq (w for write and q for quit).

Alternatively, you could both save and exit by pressing Esc and then :x

To set another editor run export EDITOR=myFavoriteEdioron your terminal, where myFavoriteEdior can be vi, gedit, subl(for sublime) etc.

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