I am using OS X 10.8, and I used brew to install a more recent version of emacs than the one shipped with OS X. The newer emacs binary is installed in /usr/local/bin (24.2.1), and the old "shipped-with-osx" one in /usr/bin (22.1.1). I updated my $PATH env variable by prepending /usr/local/bin to it. It works fine in my shell (ie. typing emacs runs the 24.2.1 version), but when git opens the editor, the emacs version is 22.1.1. Isn't git supposed to use $PATH to find the editor I want to use ? Additional informations: $ type -a emacs emacs is /usr/local/bin/emacs emacs is /usr/bin/emacs emacs is /usr/local/bin/emacs $ env PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin SHELL=/bin/zsh PAGER=most EDITOR=emacs -nw _=/usr/bin/env Please note that I'd prefer not to set the absolute path of my editor directly in my git conf, as I use this conf across multiple systems. EDIT: Here's an bit of my .zshrc: # Mac OS X if [ `uname` = "Darwin" ]; then # Brew binaries PATH="/usr/local/bin":"/usr/local/sbin":$PATH else # Everyone else (Linux) # snip fi So, yes, I could add a line export EDITOR='/usr/local/bin emacs -nw' in the first if, but I'd like to understand why git is not using my PATH variable :)