CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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Reputation: 6988

Gitconfig: Permission denied

I wanted to edit my .gitconfig file to change the default editor.

I typed $HOME/.gitconfig to set the correct directory and got

-bash: /Users/Myself/.gitconfig: Permission denied.

Why does it happen and what does it mean? How do I get past it?

(OS X Yosemite 10.10.4)

Upvotes: 8

Views: 41830

Answers (3)

theoden8
theoden8

Reputation: 803

You don't have permission to access $HOME/.gitconfig. Use open "$HOME/.gitconfig" to open the file in your default text viewer.

Upvotes: 4

Pierre-Olivier Vares
Pierre-Olivier Vares

Reputation: 1769

Just use git command :

git config --global core.editor your-favorite-editor

--global instructs git to change your global config (effectively stored in $HOME/.gitconfig), adding the following line in the [core] section :

editor=your-favorite-editor

You can add it by hand; but for that, as said by others, you mustn't try to execute $HOME/.gitconfig, but you have to open it (with a text editor)

Upvotes: 4

mgarciaisaia
mgarciaisaia

Reputation: 15650

If you want to edit that file, you should launch an editor and open the file with it.

If you type a file name as a command in a UNIX shell, the OS will try to run that file as a program, but your .gitconfig doesn't have exec permissions - that's the error you see.

You can try running $EDITOR $HOME/.gitconfig, which could get expanded to something like vim ~/.gitconfig (or whatever editor you have in your $EDITOR env variable).

Upvotes: 2

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