Emacsclient for Git commit messages

Configure the core.editor property with emacsclient to open Emacs for editing Git commit messages (assuming you do not specify the -m "commit message"option to the git command).

You can run emacsclient in one of several ways (try these approaches until you find which one worked best for your operating system).

1) in the same terminal as your git command, preferably with Emacs persistent server running.

git config --global core.editor "emacsclient --tty"

2) create a new Emacs frame, if you have Emacs persistent server running.

git config --global core.editor "emacsclient --no-wait --create-frame"

3) open in an existing Emacs application, if you are always running Emacs.

git config --global core.editor "emacsclient --no-wait"

4) Running Emacs as a daemon

git config --global core.editor "emacsclient --alternate-editor"

Or configure an operating system environment variable called ALTERNATE_EDITOR as an empty string, "", which will call emacs --daemon if emacs is not running.

Beware of old Emacs installs shipped with MacOSX

If emacsclient is not working correctly, check to see which Emacs version it run, SPC SPC emacs-version. Some MacOSX versions shipped with a very old version of Emacs (version 22).