Ubuntu – Change the default editor when sudo visudo

default-programsnanovimvisudo

When doing sudo visudo, the default editor is nano.
I want to change it to vi or vim.

I already made vim the default editor, and use it as a substitute for gedit to open php, .txt, .c and .h files, by placing a vim.desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/ and by correctly editing either ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list or /etc/gnome/defaults.list. However apparently this does not apply to nano.

Any clue ?

Best Answer

The problem is not that it does not apply to nano, it's that it does not apply to the shell:

Just set the VISUAL environment variable:

export VISUAL=vim

Add this too ~/.bashrc to make it permanent.

As you seem to use vim in general, set both VISUAL and EDITOR:

export VISUAL="vim"
export EDITOR="$VISUAL"

or more POSIX-correct

VISUAL="vim" ; export VISUAL
EDITOR="$VISUAL" ; export EDITOR

I assume nano was the value of one or both variables.

To make use of the editor in visudo actually, we need to handle that sudo does not keep the environment variables by normally. The option -E changes that.

sudo -E visudo

Without the -E here, you would end up with a default of nano again


The two variables where in use long before files named *.desktop or mime* even existed.
(And the impressive thing is: they were actually used as a common standard.)
In Ubuntu, the system default seems to be set with sudo update-alternatives --config editor. It shows a menu to change the current association.


See section ENVIRONMENT in man visudo:

  VISUAL           Invoked by visudo as the editor to use

  EDITOR           Used by visudo if VISUAL is not set
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