default editor

While downloading git, I was asked to name a default editor, which I
did: ed. from cygwin. It worked in the enuing test, but was rejected
because it returned an error. I suppose this is because
cygwin return  conventions are those of Unix, not Windows. That raises
the question: does it matter? Does any other part of git depend on the
editor's return value?

On 2021-02-07 at 13:24:07, M Douglas McIlroy wrote:

While downloading git, I was asked to name a default editor, which I
did: ed. from cygwin. It worked in the enuing test, but was rejected
because it returned an error. I suppose this is because
cygwin return  conventions are those of Unix, not Windows. That raises
the question: does it matter? Does any other part of git depend on the
editor's return value?

First of all, I don't use Windows and this sounds like a
Windows-specific problem, so you may have more help at the Git for
Windows issue tracker.  But I'll try to help anyway.

At the command line, what does "git var GIT_EDITOR" print?  Is it
"/usr/bin/ed" or the like?  Or is it something like "/c/..."?  Also,
what is the exact error message you receive from trying to run your
command (copy and paste)?

The reason I ask is that Git for Windows ships with a POSIX-like
environment called MSYS, and as such, Unix-style paths are interpreted
according to that.  So to specify a path for Cygwin, you'd need to
specify it as a Unix-style path under /c (or /d, or whatever drive) so
that it could be invoked as a normal Windows program and not something
relative to the MSYS environment.  However, the path is handed off to
the shell, so it needs to be in a form that uses slashes.

I don't think the return value is the problem.  Both Unix and Windows
return 0 on success and nonzero on error, and Git will interpret
editor return codes that way.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Houston, Texas, US