git rebase --editor=/something/other/than/vim? (for easier squashing)

git vim editor git-rebase
Sridhar Sarnobat picture Sridhar Sarnobat · Oct 31, 2013 · Viewed 19k times · Source

I happily use vim as my default editor for commits, and do not wish to change it. However, when it comes to rebasing, I find myself squashing dozens and dozens of commits which I find much easier with an interactive editor like Textwrangler (substituting "pick" with "squash" in all but the top commit).

Is there any way to specify an alternate editor for a one-off rebase command?

I know in vim I can do:

:%s/pick/squash/

but that has its own minor annoyances.

EDIT - as stated in the comments, you can squash all but the top commit very efficiently by going to the 2nd line and executing

:,$s/pick/squash/

(note the comma and dollar are different to the original)

Answer

Rob Bajorek picture Rob Bajorek · Oct 31, 2013

Try adding the GIT_EDITOR environment variable before your command, like so:

GIT_EDITOR=<editor of choice> git rebase <...>

For example, to use nano I would type:

GIT_EDITOR=nano git rebase -i abcdef1234

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