Coloured output and VIM editor in msysgit

Question

I've been setting up a new Windows 7 64-bit PC. I've installed msysgit git version 1.9.0.msysgit.0, placing both git and git BASH on my normal Windows path. I've also installed ansicon, and am running the 64-bit version.

This is, as near as I can tell, identical to the setup on my old PC; but on the new system I'm not getting coloured output from git (I am getting it from other tools, like rspec), and git is not using a default editor. On my old PC I get coloured output, and git fires up vim when it wants an editor.

I can't immediately find any config differences (the old PC shows blank for git config --global --get color.ui and git config global --get core.editor, and %EDITOR% is not set).

Any suggestions what might be different?

Answer 1

Aha, found it. I needed to change the value of the TERM environment variable.

Setting TERM=msys sorted everything.