Git send-email using Gmail

readme.md

1. Configure git.

# ~/.config/git/config
[sendemail]
  confirm = auto
  smtpServer = smtp.gmail.com
  smtpServerPort = 587
  smtpEncryption = tls
  smtpUser = <gmail email address>

2. Configure Authentication.

I believe the simplest setup is to create an application-specific password in Google dedicated to git.

Google Account -> Security -> Signing in to Google : App passwords

This password must be configured in git, but should be kept outside of your main gitconfig (which is likely versioned via a dotfile repo?). To do that, I use git's [include] directive.

# ~/.config/git/config
[include]
  path = config.local # (relative or absolute path to the other config file)

# ~/.config/git/config.local
[sendemail]
  smtpPass = <app-specific-password>

Alternatively, check out https://github.com/google/gmail-oauth2-tools/tree/master/go/sendgmail which supports authenticating to GMail with OAuth2.

3. Determine your revlist.

To send a single commit, just use the sha. To send a range of commits, you can use start_sha..end_sha. Most likely, you'll want to send the commits made to a branch that are missing in upstream. For that, you would use: upstream/branch_name..branch_name You can also use relative numbers to indicate the "previous X commits". e.g. git send-email -3

4. Send email:

git send-email <revlist> --to <other@user.com>

5. If you receive an error like this:

Can't locate Net/SMTP/SSL.pm in @INC (@INC contains: ...

You may need to upgrade/install the Net::SMTP::SSL or IO::Socket::SSL packages:

sudo -H cpan Net::SMTP::SSL
sudo -H cpan IO::Socket::SSL

6. Advanced: configure multiple identites. You may configure multiple smtp servers and switch between them with identities.

[sendemail "gmail"]
  smtpUser = jason@gmail.com
  smtpServer = smtp.gmail.com

[sendemail "outlook"]
  smtpUser = jason@outlook.com
  smtpServer = smtp.office365.com
  
[sendemail]
  identity = outlook

For those who don't want to use their Gmail password for this or enable "less secure apps", I wrote a plug-in for git-send-email that uses OAuth 2 authorization. It requests only the minimum required permissions (send email on your behalf) and stores OAuth token data in Windows Credential Store, like Git Credential Manager does. Google has a plug-in which works in a similar fashion, but keeps credentials in a file, and uses less restricted tokens (all of Gmail vs just send email on your behalf). It works on Linux though.

jamessanchez@gemal.com

@johnlinp, it looks like you have to either use 2-factor authentication with an app-specific password, OR allow less secure app access. See here: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-send-email#_use_gmail_as_the_smtp_server. I'd rather do the former, as it seems more-secure. I'm attempting to set this up now...

From: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-send-email#_use_gmail_as_the_smtp_server:

If you have multi-factor authentication set up on your Gmail account, you will need to generate an app-specific password for use with git send-email. Visit https://security.google.com/settings/security/apppasswords to create it.

If you do not have multi-factor authentication set up on your Gmail account, you will need to allow less secure app access. Visit https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps to enable it.

After a great deal of effort, I got it all working. See my full instructions on Stack Overflow now, here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68238912/how-to-configure-and-use-git-send-email-to-work-with-gmail-to-email-patches-to/68238913#68238913

After a great deal of effort, I got it all working. See my full instructions on Stack Overflow now, here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68238912/how-to-configure-and-use-git-send-email-to-work-with-gmail-to-email-patches-to/68238913#68238913

great work !

On Manjaro (21.08), git config: ~/.gitconfig
And need these packages: perl-mime-tools perl-authen-sasl

I had to turn on "less secure apps" at https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps to make this work.

This will no longer work after May 30, as of Google said to me.