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Editor

Use your preferred editor with chezmoi edit and chezmoi edit-config

By default, chezmoi will use your preferred editor as defined by the $VISUAL or $EDITOR environment variables, falling back to a default editor depending on your operating system (vi on UNIX-like operating systems, notepad.exe on Windows).

You can configure chezmoi to use your preferred editor by either setting the $EDITOR environment variable or setting the edit.command variable in your configuration file.

The editor command must only return when you have finished editing the files. chezmoi will emit a warning if your editor command returns too quickly.

In the specific case of using VSCode or Codium as your editor, you must pass the --wait flag, for example, in your shell config:

export EDITOR="code --wait"

Or in chezmoi's configuration file:

~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml
[edit]
    command = "code"
    args = ["--wait"]

Warning

If you use Helix, you must use Helix 25.01 or later.

Use chezmoi with VIM

github.com/alker0/chezmoi.vim provides syntax highlighting for files managed by chezmoi, including for templates.

github.com/Lilja/vim-chezmoi works with chezmoi edit to apply the edited dotfile on save.

github.com/xvzc/chezmoi.nvim allows you to edit your chezmoi-managed files and automatically apply.

Alternatively, you can use an autocmd to run chezmoi apply whenever you save a dotfile, but you must disable chezmoi edit's hardlinking:

~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml
[edit]
    hardlink = false
~/.vimrc
autocmd BufWritePost ~/.local/share/chezmoi/* ! chezmoi apply --source-path "%"

Use chezmoi with emacs

github.com/tuh8888/chezmoi.el provides convenience functions for interacting with chezmoi from Emacs, and is available in MELPA.