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@jasonkarns
Last active June 26, 2024 14:16
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Git send-email using Gmail
  1. Configure git.
# ~/.config/git/config
[sendemail]
  confirm = auto
  smtpServer = smtp.gmail.com
  smtpServerPort = 587
  smtpEncryption = tls
  smtpUser = <gmail email address>
  1. 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.

  1. 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

  1. Send email:
git send-email <revlist> --to <other@user.com>
  1. 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
  1. 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
@ElectricRCAircraftGuy
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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

@hitmoon
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hitmoon commented Jul 16, 2021

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 !

@bensuperpc
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bensuperpc commented Aug 21, 2021

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

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ghost commented Mar 7, 2022

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.

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