error: unable to start editor '' (error: cannot spawn : No such file or directory)

[Simran-B]

• I was not able to find an open or closed issue matching what I'm seeing

Setup

• Which version of Git for Windows are you using? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

git version 2.20.1.windows.1
cpu: x86_64
built from commit: 7c9fbc07db0e2939b36095df45864b8cda19b64f
sizeof-long: 4
sizeof-size_t: 8

• Which version of Windows are you running? Vista, 7, 8, 10? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.472] (Pro, 64-bit)

• What options did you set as part of the installation? Or did you choose the
  defaults?

Editor Option: VisualStudioCode
Custom Editor Path:
Path Option: Cmd
SSH Option: OpenSSH
CURL Option: OpenSSL
CRLF Option: CRLFAlways
Bash Terminal Option: MinTTY
Performance Tweaks FSCache: Enabled
Use Credential Manager: Enabled
Enable Symlinks: Enabled

Details

• Which terminal/shell are you running Git from? e.g Bash/CMD/PowerShell/other

CMD

• What commands did you run to trigger this issue? If you can provide a
  Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example
  this will help us understand the issue.

git rebase -i HEAD~2

• What did you expect to occur after running these commands?

Interactive rebase to start Visual Studio Code

• What actually happened instead?

Git was unable to launch Visual Studio Code:

hint: Waiting for your editor to close the file... error: cannot spawn : No such file or directory
error: unable to start editor ''

I then ran the Git setup again and made sure that Visual Studio Code is selected as default editor, but after re-installation and opening a new command prompt, the same problem still occurred.

Then I checked the configuration:

$ git config --global core.editor
'C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe' --wait

If I use Ctrl+R for this very command in single quote marks, an error occurs (not found). If I replace the single quote marks by double quote marks, VSCode is launched successfully:

"C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe" --wait

I tried to change the configuration:

$ git config --global core.editor "C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe" --wait
$ git config --global core.editor
C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe

This does not work, the quote marks and the --wait option disappear. I tried a few variations and ended up with this:

$ git config --global core.editor "\"C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe\" --wait"

$ git config --global core.editor
"C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe" --wait

This looked promising, but the interactive rebase still fails with the same error message (same if I don't add quote marks). How to properly configure Git for VSCode under Windows?

[dscho]

Does it work if you replace the backslashes by forward slashes?

[Simran-B]

I tried all of the following and none worked:

"C:/Users/Simran/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/Code.exe"

"C:/Users/Simran/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/Code.exe --wait"
"\"C:/Users/Simran/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C:/Users/Simran/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/Code.exe' --wait"

"C:\\Users\\Simran\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft_VS_Code\\Code.exe --wait"
"\"C:\\Users\\Simran\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C:\\Users\\Simran\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\Code.exe' --wait"

"C:\\\\Users\\\\Simran\\\\AppData\\\\Local\\\\Programs\\\\Microsoft_VS_Code\\\\Code.exe --wait"
"\"C:\\\\Users\\\\Simran\\\\AppData\\\\Local\\\\Programs\\\\Microsoft VS Code\\\\Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C:\\\\Users\\\\Simran\\\\AppData\\\\Local\\\\Programs\\\\Microsoft VS Code\\\\Code.exe' --wait"

"C://Users//Simran//AppData//Local//Programs//Microsoft_VS_Code//Code.exe --wait"
"\"C://Users//Simran//AppData//Local//Programs//Microsoft VS Code//Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C://Users//Simran//AppData//Local//Programs//Microsoft VS Code//Code.exe' --wait"

I even renamed the folder to Microsoft_VS_Code (so no spaces in the path anymore) and tried these:

"C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft_VS_Code\Code.exe --wait"
"\"C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft_VS_Code\Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft_VS_Code\Code.exe' --wait"

"C:\\Users\\Simran\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft_VS_Code\\Code.exe --wait"
"\"C:\\Users\\Simran\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft_VS_Code\\Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C:\\Users\\Simran\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft_VS_Code\\Code.exe' --wait"

"C:\\\\Users\\\\Simran\\\\AppData\\\\Local\\\\Programs\\\\Microsoft_VS_Code\\\\Code.exe --wait"
"\"C:\\\\Users\\\\Simran\\\\AppData\\\\Local\\\\Programs\\\\Microsoft_VS_Code\\\\Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C:\\\\Users\\\\Simran\\\\AppData\\\\Local\\\\Programs\\\\Microsoft_VS_Code\\\\Code.exe' --wait"

"C:/Users/Simran/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft_VS_Code/Code.exe --wait"
"\"C:/Users/Simran/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft_VS_Code/Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C:/Users/Simran/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft_VS_Code/Code.exe' --wait"

"C://Users//Simran//AppData//Local//Programs//Microsoft_VS_Code//Code.exe --wait"
"\"C://Users//Simran//AppData//Local//Programs//Microsoft_VS_Code//Code.exe\" --wait"
"'C://Users//Simran//AppData//Local//Programs//Microsoft_VS_Code//Code.exe' --wait"

The error is always

hint: Waiting for your editor to close the file... error: cannot spawn : No such file or directory
error: unable to start editor ''

It seems like something is fundamentally broken in the way Git tries to launch another program.

[PhilipOakley]

Just wondering if this has a long tail link to #2001, and onward to #2007, which is a recent change noted as:

This problem becomes apparent on Git for Windows since fe21c6b285df
(mingw: reencode environment variables on the fly (UTF-16 <-> UTF-8)),
when the getenv() implementation provided in compat/mingw.c was changed
to keep a certain amount of alloc'ed strings and freeing them on
subsequent calls.

[Simran-B]

Sounds probable, especially because git commit --amend launches VS Code for me without issues if I set it back to the default (so this is certainly not an installer issue). It also works with escaped double quote marks and with forward slashes:

git config --global core.editor "'C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe' --wait"
git config --global core.editor "\"C:\Users\Simran\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe\" --wait"
git config --global core.editor "'C:/Users/Simran/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft VS Code/Code.exe' --wait"

[Simran-B]

Interestingly, VS Code is also started successfully for COMMIT_EDITMSG in a merge with 50k files involved.

[dscho]

@Simran-B could you test with v2.21.0-rc0? There are quite a few getenv()-related fixes and workarounds in that version.

[dscho]

@Simran-B or with the latest snapshot?

[Simran-B]

First, I verified that the error occurs in Command Prompt, PowerShell as well as Git Bash using v2.20.1 - it does. So it shouldn't matter which terminal is used to check if a particular version is broken or not.

Next, I downloaded the PortableGit 2.21.0 64-bit packages of rc0, rc1 and rc2 and tried the same command in git-bash.exe and git-cmd.exe.
❌ Got the error in every attempt.

I also tried:
❌ PortableGit snapshot 2.21.0.rc2.windows.1.707.gf6431ebcae (64 and 32 bit)
❌ MinGit-prerelease-2.21.0.rc2.windows.1.707.gf6431ebcae-64-bit (cmd\git.exe)
❌ MinGit-prerelease-2.21.0.rc2.windows.1.707.gf6431ebcae-BusyBox-64-bit (cmd\git.exe)
❌ Git-prerelease-2.21.0.rc2.windows.1.707.gf6431ebcae-64-bit.exe (Windows installer)

... but to no avail 😞

Finally, I tried to find the last working version:
✔️ 2.17.0.windows.1
✔️ 2.18.0.windows.1
✔️ 2.19.0.rc0.windows.1
❌ 2.19.0.rc0.windows.2
✔️ 2.19.0.rc1.windows.1
✔️ 2.19.0.rc2.windows.1
✔️ 2.19.0.windows.1
✔️ 2.19.1.windows.1
❌ 2.19.2.windows.1
❌ 2.20.0.rc0.windows.1
❌ 2.20.0.rc1.windows.1
❌ 2.20.0.rc2.windows.1
❌ 2.20.0.windows.1

So it was broken somewhere between 2.19.1 and 2.19.2, except that there is exactly one RC (2.19.0.rc0.windows.2) which is also broken, but not the preceding and following release candidates - what on earth?!

[Simran-B]

Found the answer here: git-for-windows/build-extra#203 (comment)

• 2.19.1 has optional support for built-in rebase, but it's disabled by default
• 2.19.2 uses the built-in rebase by default, rebase.useBuiltin true does not need to be set
• If I explicitly set this to false, then the built-in rebase is not used and it works. If it's enabled, then it fails. The built-in rebase was apparently never able to launch the editor on Windows and is broken up to the latest snapshot.

[dscho]

@Simran-B thank you for your patient reporting and testing.

What you found is an odd thing, indeed, until one realizes that there are two ways to launch the editor: one from git.exe directly, and one from the (still too many) Unix shell scripts in which part of Git is implemented.

The Unix shell scripts have no problem with the single quotes, but git.exe does.

So what I am doing right now is to change the installer to use double quotes when configuring the editor.