git rebase could not execute editor

Question

I'm attempting to squash some git commits using rebase. When I run this:

git rebase -i HEAD

I get this error:

/usr/lib/git-core/git-rebase: 1: eval: /usr/bin/mate: not found
Could not execute editor

I've attempted to change the git config editor variable but I haven't gotten it to work. Right now my config file shows the following:

[core]
    editor = /usr/bin/vim

I'm running Ubuntu 13.04

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Do something like that

$ git config --global core.editor emacs

where emacs paste name of your editor

Answer 2

Check to make sure GIT_EDITOR is not set in your environment. It takes precedence over core.editor.

Answer 3

As additional measure you can look at the sequence.editor config option:

[sequence]
    editor = /usr/bin/vim

or override it's behavior with GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim env variable.

More details you can find on: git-config.txt-sequenceeditor