where is the 'Editor' variable kept in git?

Question

I cloned a repo (using fictious examples here)

$ git clone http://someplace.somedomain.name/resource.git 

went to the directory

$ cd resource

and then tried to edit a file within the resource directory

/home/shirish/resource $ editor somefile.txt

Now I am not familiar with what editor is being used by git and if it something internal. I am running git 2.11.0 on Debian testing.

I did hunt around and saw this https://help.github.com/articles/associating-text-editors-with-git/ but the documentation doesn't tell me how do I search to know/see which editor it uses. Is there a way ?

Answer 1

In Debian, the editor command is an alternative:

sudo update-alternatives --config editor

It's not managed by git.

When a git commands needs an editor (e.g. for a commit message), it uses the editor given by the GIT_EDITOR environment variable, or failing that, the editor specified by the core.editor variable. See git-var(1) and git-config(1) for details; but basically to set it up globally, run

git config --global core.editor emacs

which will store your preference in .gitconfig in your home directory.

Answer 2

You can use type editor to see what your shell does when editor is entered. I don't believe it has anything to do with Git.