Configure git commit editor colors

Question

What is the parameter to configure the color of the first line (and the body text) of the commit message editor of git? (In case that matters, I am using vim as an editor).

I have found many related resources, but none of them gave the option to specify this color. (For the records, the most relevant hits were the following:

• https://gist.github.com/rab/4067067
• Git - Do colours mean something in the editor that opens when I commit?
• https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44266)

I am beginning to suspect that this option has to be configured somewhere else (e.g. in bash or in vim)...

Answer 1

To change the color of the title when you are editing the commit message in vim, add following code to ~/.vimrc

au FileType gitcommit
 \ hi gitcommitSummary ctermfg=yellow ctermbg=red

other highlight option can be found by typing :hi in vim command, or from following url

https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/master/runtime/syntax/gitcommit.vim

Answer 2

As the syntax script for the gitcommit filetype properly uses :hi def link, you can simply overwrite any of its highlightings in your ~/.vimrc:

:hi gitcommitSummary ctermfg=yellow ctermbg=red

No :au FileType gitcommit (as in @ymonad's answer) is necessary.