External editor does not start with EDITOR set

[darthmall]

Describe the bug
I have set EDITOR=nvim in my shell, but when I hit ctrl-e, nothing happens.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Stage changes
2. Press 'w' to switch to staged changes
3. Press 'ctrl+e'
4. Nothing happens

Expected behavior
NeoVim should start up with the commit message template.

Context (please complete the following information):

• OS/Distro + Version: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS x86_64
• GitUI Version: 0.22.1
• Rust version: 1.67.1

Additional context
I’m using fish version 3.6.1 for my shell, and I have NeoVim version 0.8.2. I have tried running EDITOR=vi gitui and ctrl-e still does nothing.

[pm100]

^e is only available in the commit popup. 'h' shows help

in the staged change box, press 'c' to start a commit. You will get

now hit ^e

[darthmall]

Thanks, I misunderstood the help menu in the app. But now I’m getting an error:

Failed to launch editor:
"$EDITOR": no such file or directory (os error 2)

I’ve tried the following:

1. EDITOR=nvim gitui
2. EDITOR=vi gitui
3. EDITOR=/home/evan/.local/bin/nvim gitui

I have no trouble launching either vi or nvim from the same shell in which I then launch gitui.

[pm100]

Hmm, very odd. Can you please show exactly how you set that editor variable. The fact that the error message says '$EDITOR' is very strange.

When I do

and try to invoke the editor I get

Note that the thing that is reported is the content of the editor specification, not the variable name.

I can create that error condition by doing this

git config core.editor '$EDITOR'
export EDITOR=nvim

and I get

But that is mixing two ways of setting up the editor. Plus the quoting of $EDITOR means that its not really an environment variable.

To specify the editor you can either do:

export EDITOR=vim

(or VISUAL or GIT_EDITOR)

or

git config core.editor=vim

BTW the precedence is GIT_EDITOR, core.editor, VISUAL, EDITOR

I also wonder why you have tried to invoke nvim gitui. Why pass gitui as an argument to the editor?

[darthmall]

BTW the precedence is GIT_EDITOR, core.editor, VISUAL, EDITOR

Ok, that’s what it was. I had a bad value for core.editor in ~/.gitconfig.

But for what it’s worth, I was not passing gitui as an argument to nvim. The commands I executed are:

1. EDITOR=nvim gitui
2. EDITOR=vi gitui
3. EDITOR=/home/evan/.local/bin/nvim gitui

Beginning the command with EDITOR=nvim sets the environment variable EDITOR for just that command, so that you don’t have to keep running export or set in your shell when you’re testing multiple values.

[pm100]

Yup, my bad with the last question. So you good now? Can you close this please