Changing default editor

Question

There are two ways to change the default editor:

update-alternatives --set editor /bin/nano
export EDITOR='/bin/nano'
added to ~/.bashrc (single user) or /etc/profile.d/ (all users)

Is there any difference / nuance between them? e.g. availability on multiple distros?

UPDATE

There is also select-editor

What is the big picture, the final goal? Why do you want to set the default editor for bash users on most systems, but not for users of other shells? — Philippos, Sep 18, 2019 at 10:31
Why not both? set EDITOR=editor and configure the alternatives to point to whatever real editor. Covers most bases. — muru, Sep 18, 2019 at 10:41
@muru What is editor? Is that just a symlink to something defined by `update-alternatives" tool? — lonix, Sep 18, 2019 at 10:49
@Philippos I've removed that bit to avoid going off topic. I concede your point. — lonix, Sep 18, 2019 at 10:50

markgraf · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-18 11:34:19Z

update-alternatives is ~~specific to debian~~
Changing a users .bashrc is a bad idea. Your users will hate you.
Writing a file to /etc/profile.d/ will not affect users of ksh, csh, zsh...
any settings made in the users .bashrc will overwrite your setting. Which is a good thing.

If update-alternatives is available on the target system, that's the way to go. It should be available on both debian- and redhat-distros.

Otherwise /etc/profile.d/ is probably your best option. But you will need to look in other places to configure the not-bash shells.

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