Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@jasonkarns
Last active October 17, 2024 10:13
Show Gist options
  • Save jasonkarns/4354421 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save jasonkarns/4354421 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
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
@hitmoon
Copy link

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
Copy link

bensuperpc commented Aug 21, 2021

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

Copy link

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.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment