Change mc (midnight commander) editor to mcedit / How to make mcedit default editor for mc once again / Change Debian Default editor the correct way

Monday, 22nd March 2010

I’m considering to use mc (midnight commander) to review some dozens of source files in php/css and Java. However currently on my Debian Lenny I have configured vim to be the default editor in the system. The way I’ve setupped my vim to be the default editor is not really canonical, I mean I did it through $EDITOR variable in my /root/.bashrc and my ~/.bashrc file. In other words I have:

export VISUAL='vim'
export EDITOR='vim'

in my .bashrc files.
Though the correct way to do that is actually either by:

hipo@noah:~# update-alternatives --config editor

or through by linking /etc/alternatives/editor to your vim for instance:

hipo@noah:~# rm -f /etc/alternatives/editor
hipo@noah:~# ln -sf /usr/bin/vim /etc/alternatives/editor

As a result of my non-canonical ways to do things on the Debian as whenever I tried opening files with midnight commander (mc), files ended opening with vim.
I have to note that really sux a lot and therefore I hurried up to change mc’s behaviour back to normal.
Here is how:

While in mc press F9 and go to the Options menu, then navigate to Configuration
Now tick on the text reading: use internal edIt
afterwards it might be also a good idea to select Save Setup from the Options in order to save changed settings for future use.

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