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 <[email protected]>

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 = [email protected]
  smtpServer = smtp.gmail.com

[sendemail "outlook"]
  smtpUser = [email protected]
  smtpServer = smtp.office365.com
  
[sendemail]
  identity = outlook

Note that the sendemail.from field in the git configuration isn't needed if user.name and user.email are defined. In fact, setting it to just an email address means that the mail will be sent without a name, which looks dumb.

Note: I couldn't make an app password, and kept getting junk ilke this despite repeatedly visiting the link and verifying my identity:

5.7.14 <https://accounts.google.com/signin/continue?sarp=1&scc=1&plt=AKgnsbuh
5.7.14 Sqh-d0mO0m15az13tmQgNJo8Clb9qT4TFHpiAyDRZmgrIcnO5iamPxcRUIr8wVOg6OPszB
5.7.14 VCCL1wb6mAT4aguBGLJ_-rKb5KptizHkWGrViPN6MDJMyuSc2Z7viiBHMVbpZKTkYqAmvz
5.7.14 ZH0w1ngbi_5o8w3oCE4XNIPNQKN0hJHwtO9c92uXVvj0SJFpYNX3SWFSte96tdAi75YUcR
5.7.14 rrTezfVs62SP10G7yhz597BWv4skqmpYlavZMwjNIaaTDkFM6MILIP0ubtRYGNI5dnAsuR
5.7.14 -07yiifJYq826D3PXorhlbEgGh_W469_dhuUJ_p70Krp0rLHvSIwHuZue4zcXCvbf2cDSS
5.7.14 sSfRO1UcmjuMyRVxUSU568c4mJp9GDgmCAnIWg3zHAMztpBrnMUAYwYaS_VvACiJ5e7y06
5.7.14 yWkveGA07XUX4UTWFhoHMKX80jhPwUHwpJngkz8Xl6AO9OHyUu2Qg3-QBvoU3FDfxiCRSg
5.7.14 eCRfw> Please log in via your web browser and then try again.
5.7.14  Learn more at
5.7.14  https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78754 p5-v6sm17682914qkd.81 - gsmtp

The solution was:
A) posted a complaint on the google help forums at https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/gmail ... I didn't get a reply, but after my post my account magically let me through some of the issues
B) log into my account from a local system, with no proxy (I was using Tor before)
C) enable 2-factor authentication
D) now, I could generate an app password and log in using git send-email (even from tor!) !

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

Thanks for the tip @johnlinp! I think it might've taken me awhile to find that 😄

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.

[email protected]

@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.