git-send-email(1) — Linux manual page
GIT-SEND-EMAIL(1) Git Manual GIT-SEND-EMAIL(1)
NAME
git-send-email - Send a collection of patches as emails
SYNOPSIS
git send-email [<options>] (<file>|<directory>)...
git send-email [<options>] <format-patch-options>
git send-email --dump-aliases
DESCRIPTION
Takes the patches given on the command line and emails them out.
Patches can be specified as files, directories (which will send
all files in the directory), or directly as a revision list. In
the last case, any format accepted by git-format-patch(1) can be
passed to git send-email, as well as options understood by
git-format-patch(1).
The header of the email is configurable via command-line options.
If not specified on the command line, the user will be prompted
with a ReadLine enabled interface to provide the necessary
information.
There are two formats accepted for patch files:
1. mbox format files
This is what git-format-patch(1) generates. Most headers and
MIME formatting are ignored.
2. The original format used by Greg Kroah-Hartman’s
send_lots_of_email.pl script
This format expects the first line of the file to contain the
"Cc:" value and the "Subject:" of the message as the second
line.
OPTIONS
Composing
--annotate
Review and edit each patch you’re about to send. Default is
the value of sendemail.annotate. See the CONFIGURATION
section for sendemail.multiEdit.
--bcc=<address>,...
Specify a "Bcc:" value for each email. Default is the value
of sendemail.bcc.
This option may be specified multiple times.
--cc=<address>,...
Specify a starting "Cc:" value for each email. Default is the
value of sendemail.cc.
This option may be specified multiple times.
--compose
Invoke a text editor (see GIT_EDITOR in git-var(1)) to edit
an introductory message for the patch series.
When --compose is used, git send-email will use the From, To,
Cc, Bcc, Subject, Reply-To, and In-Reply-To headers specified
in the message. If the body of the message (what you type
after the headers and a blank line) only contains blank (or
Git: prefixed) lines, the summary won’t be sent, but the
headers mentioned above will be used unless they are removed.
Missing From or In-Reply-To headers will be prompted for.
See the CONFIGURATION section for sendemail.multiEdit.
--from=<address>
Specify the sender of the emails. If not specified on the
command line, the value of the sendemail.from configuration
option is used. If neither the command-line option nor
sendemail.from are set, then the user will be prompted for
the value. The default for the prompt will be the value of
GIT_AUTHOR_IDENT, or GIT_COMMITTER_IDENT if that is not set,
as returned by "git var -l".
--reply-to=<address>
Specify the address where replies from recipients should go
to. Use this if replies to messages should go to another
address than what is specified with the --from parameter.
--in-reply-to=<identifier>
Make the first mail (or all the mails with --no-thread)
appear as a reply to the given Message-ID, which avoids
breaking threads to provide a new patch series. The second
and subsequent emails will be sent as replies according to
the --[no-]chain-reply-to setting.
So for example when --thread and --no-chain-reply-to are
specified, the second and subsequent patches will be replies
to the first one like in the illustration below where [PATCH
v2 0/3] is in reply to [PATCH 0/2]:
[PATCH 0/2] Here is what I did...
[PATCH 1/2] Clean up and tests
[PATCH 2/2] Implementation
[PATCH v2 0/3] Here is a reroll
[PATCH v2 1/3] Clean up
[PATCH v2 2/3] New tests
[PATCH v2 3/3] Implementation
Only necessary if --compose is also set. If --compose is not
set, this will be prompted for.
--subject=<string>
Specify the initial subject of the email thread. Only
necessary if --compose is also set. If --compose is not set,
this will be prompted for.
--to=<address>,...
Specify the primary recipient of the emails generated.
Generally, this will be the upstream maintainer of the
project involved. Default is the value of the sendemail.to
configuration value; if that is unspecified, and --to-cmd is
not specified, this will be prompted for.
This option may be specified multiple times.
--8bit-encoding=<encoding>
When encountering a non-ASCII message or subject that does
not declare its encoding, add headers/quoting to indicate it
is encoded in <encoding>. Default is the value of the
sendemail.assume8bitEncoding; if that is unspecified, this
will be prompted for if any non-ASCII files are encountered.
Note that no attempts whatsoever are made to validate the
encoding.
--compose-encoding=<encoding>
Specify encoding of compose message. Default is the value of
the sendemail.composeEncoding; if that is unspecified, UTF-8
is assumed.
--transfer-encoding=(7bit|8bit|quoted-printable|base64|auto)
Specify the transfer encoding to be used to send the message
over SMTP. 7bit will fail upon encountering a non-ASCII
message. quoted-printable can be useful when the repository
contains files that contain carriage returns, but makes the
raw patch email file (as saved from a MUA) much harder to
inspect manually. base64 is even more fool proof, but also
even more opaque. auto will use 8bit when possible, and
quoted-printable otherwise.
Default is the value of the sendemail.transferEncoding
configuration value; if that is unspecified, default to auto.
--xmailer, --no-xmailer
Add (or prevent adding) the "X-Mailer:" header. By default,
the header is added, but it can be turned off by setting the
sendemail.xmailer configuration variable to false.
Sending
--envelope-sender=<address>
Specify the envelope sender used to send the emails. This is
useful if your default address is not the address that is
subscribed to a list. In order to use the From address, set
the value to "auto". If you use the sendmail binary, you must
have suitable privileges for the -f parameter. Default is the
value of the sendemail.envelopeSender configuration variable;
if that is unspecified, choosing the envelope sender is left
to your MTA.
--sendmail-cmd=<command>
Specify a command to run to send the email. The command
should be sendmail-like; specifically, it must support the -i
option. The command will be executed in the shell if
necessary. Default is the value of sendemail.sendmailCmd. If
unspecified, and if --smtp-server is also unspecified,
git-send-email will search for sendmail in /usr/sbin,
/usr/lib and $PATH.
--smtp-encryption=<encryption>
Specify in what way encrypting begins for the SMTP
connection. Valid values are ssl and tls. Any other value
reverts to plain (unencrypted) SMTP, which defaults to port
25. Despite the names, both values will use the same newer
version of TLS, but for historic reasons have these names.
ssl refers to "implicit" encryption (sometimes called SMTPS),
that uses port 465 by default. tls refers to "explicit"
encryption (often known as STARTTLS), that uses port 25 by
default. Other ports might be used by the SMTP server, which
are not the default. Commonly found alternative port for tls
and unencrypted is 587. You need to check your provider’s
documentation or your server configuration to make sure for
your own case. Default is the value of
sendemail.smtpEncryption.
--smtp-domain=<FQDN>
Specifies the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) used in the
HELO/EHLO command to the SMTP server. Some servers require
the FQDN to match your IP address. If not set, git send-email
attempts to determine your FQDN automatically. Default is the
value of sendemail.smtpDomain.
--smtp-auth=<mechanisms>
Whitespace-separated list of allowed SMTP-AUTH mechanisms.
This setting forces using only the listed mechanisms.
Example:
$ git send-email --smtp-auth="PLAIN LOGIN GSSAPI" ...
If at least one of the specified mechanisms matches the ones
advertised by the SMTP server and if it is supported by the
utilized SASL library, the mechanism is used for
authentication. If neither sendemail.smtpAuth nor --smtp-auth
is specified, all mechanisms supported by the SASL library
can be used. The special value none maybe specified to
completely disable authentication independently of
--smtp-user
--smtp-pass[=<password>]
Password for SMTP-AUTH. The argument is optional: If no
argument is specified, then the empty string is used as the
password. Default is the value of sendemail.smtpPass, however
--smtp-pass always overrides this value.
Furthermore, passwords need not be specified in configuration
files or on the command line. If a username has been
specified (with --smtp-user or a sendemail.smtpUser), but no
password has been specified (with --smtp-pass or
sendemail.smtpPass), then a password is obtained using
git-credential.
--no-smtp-auth
Disable SMTP authentication. Short hand for --smtp-auth=none
--smtp-server=<host>
If set, specifies the outgoing SMTP server to use (e.g.
smtp.example.com or a raw IP address). If unspecified, and if
--sendmail-cmd is also unspecified, the default is to search
for sendmail in /usr/sbin, /usr/lib and $PATH if such a
program is available, falling back to localhost otherwise.
For backward compatibility, this option can also specify a
full pathname of a sendmail-like program instead; the program
must support the -i option. This method does not support
passing arguments or using plain command names. For those use
cases, consider using --sendmail-cmd instead.
--smtp-server-port=<port>
Specifies a port different from the default port (SMTP
servers typically listen to smtp port 25, but may also listen
to submission port 587, or the common SSL smtp port 465);
symbolic port names (e.g. "submission" instead of 587) are
also accepted. The port can also be set with the
sendemail.smtpServerPort configuration variable.
--smtp-server-option=<option>
If set, specifies the outgoing SMTP server option to use.
Default value can be specified by the
sendemail.smtpServerOption configuration option.
The --smtp-server-option option must be repeated for each
option you want to pass to the server. Likewise, different
lines in the configuration files must be used for each
option.
--smtp-ssl
Legacy alias for --smtp-encryption ssl.
--smtp-ssl-cert-path
Path to a store of trusted CA certificates for SMTP SSL/TLS
certificate validation (either a directory that has been
processed by c_rehash, or a single file containing one or
more PEM format certificates concatenated together: see
verify(1) -CAfile and -CApath for more information on these).
Set it to an empty string to disable certificate
verification. Defaults to the value of the
sendemail.smtpSSLCertPath configuration variable, if set, or
the backing SSL library’s compiled-in default otherwise
(which should be the best choice on most platforms).
--smtp-user=<user>
Username for SMTP-AUTH. Default is the value of
sendemail.smtpUser; if a username is not specified (with
--smtp-user or sendemail.smtpUser), then authentication is
not attempted.
--smtp-debug=(0|1)
Enable (1) or disable (0) debug output. If enabled, SMTP
commands and replies will be printed. Useful to debug TLS
connection and authentication problems.
--batch-size=<num>
Some email servers (e.g. smtp.163.com) limit the number
emails to be sent per session (connection) and this will lead
to a failure when sending many messages. With this option,
send-email will disconnect after sending $<num> messages and
wait for a few seconds (see --relogin-delay) and reconnect,
to work around such a limit. You may want to use some form of
credential helper to avoid having to retype your password
every time this happens. Defaults to the
sendemail.smtpBatchSize configuration variable.
--relogin-delay=<int>
Waiting $<int> seconds before reconnecting to SMTP server.
Used together with --batch-size option. Defaults to the
sendemail.smtpReloginDelay configuration variable.
Automating
--no-to, --no-cc, --no-bcc
Clears any list of "To:", "Cc:", "Bcc:" addresses previously
set via config.
--no-identity
Clears the previously read value of sendemail.identity set
via config, if any.
--to-cmd=<command>
Specify a command to execute once per patch file which should
generate patch file specific "To:" entries. Output of this
command must be single email address per line. Default is the
value of sendemail.toCmd configuration value.
--cc-cmd=<command>
Specify a command to execute once per patch file which should
generate patch file specific "Cc:" entries. Output of this
command must be single email address per line. Default is the
value of sendemail.ccCmd configuration value.
--header-cmd=<command>
Specify a command that is executed once per outgoing message
and output RFC 2822 style header lines to be inserted into
them. When the sendemail.headerCmd configuration variable is
set, its value is always used. When --header-cmd is provided
at the command line, its value takes precedence over the
sendemail.headerCmd configuration variable.
--no-header-cmd
Disable any header command in use.
--[no-]chain-reply-to
If this is set, each email will be sent as a reply to the
previous email sent. If disabled with "--no-chain-reply-to",
all emails after the first will be sent as replies to the
first email sent. When using this, it is recommended that the
first file given be an overview of the entire patch series.
Disabled by default, but the sendemail.chainReplyTo
configuration variable can be used to enable it.
--identity=<identity>
A configuration identity. When given, causes values in the
sendemail.<identity> subsection to take precedence over
values in the sendemail section. The default identity is the
value of sendemail.identity.
--[no-]signed-off-by-cc
If this is set, add emails found in the Signed-off-by trailer
or Cc: lines to the cc list. Default is the value of
sendemail.signedOffByCc configuration value; if that is
unspecified, default to --signed-off-by-cc.
--[no-]cc-cover
If this is set, emails found in Cc: headers in the first
patch of the series (typically the cover letter) are added to
the cc list for each email set. Default is the value of
sendemail.ccCover configuration value; if that is
unspecified, default to --no-cc-cover.
--[no-]to-cover
If this is set, emails found in To: headers in the first
patch of the series (typically the cover letter) are added to
the to list for each email set. Default is the value of
sendemail.toCover configuration value; if that is
unspecified, default to --no-to-cover.
--suppress-cc=<category>
Specify an additional category of recipients to suppress the
auto-cc of:
• author will avoid including the patch author.
• self will avoid including the sender.
• cc will avoid including anyone mentioned in Cc lines in
the patch header except for self (use self for that).
• bodycc will avoid including anyone mentioned in Cc lines
in the patch body (commit message) except for self (use
self for that).
• sob will avoid including anyone mentioned in the
Signed-off-by trailers except for self (use self for
that).
• misc-by will avoid including anyone mentioned in
Acked-by, Reviewed-by, Tested-by and other "-by" lines in
the patch body, except Signed-off-by (use sob for that).
• cccmd will avoid running the --cc-cmd.
• body is equivalent to sob + bodycc + misc-by.
• all will suppress all auto cc values.
Default is the value of sendemail.suppressCc configuration
value; if that is unspecified, default to self if
--suppress-from is specified, as well as body if
--no-signed-off-cc is specified.
--[no-]suppress-from
If this is set, do not add the From: address to the cc: list.
Default is the value of sendemail.suppressFrom configuration
value; if that is unspecified, default to --no-suppress-from.
--[no-]thread
If this is set, the In-Reply-To and References headers will
be added to each email sent. Whether each mail refers to the
previous email (deep threading per git format-patch wording)
or to the first email (shallow threading) is governed by
"--[no-]chain-reply-to".
If disabled with "--no-thread", those headers will not be
added (unless specified with --in-reply-to). Default is the
value of the sendemail.thread configuration value; if that is
unspecified, default to --thread.
It is up to the user to ensure that no In-Reply-To header
already exists when git send-email is asked to add it
(especially note that git format-patch can be configured to
do the threading itself). Failure to do so may not produce
the expected result in the recipient’s MUA.
Administering
--confirm=<mode>
Confirm just before sending:
• always will always confirm before sending
• never will never confirm before sending
• cc will confirm before sending when send-email has
automatically added addresses from the patch to the Cc
list
• compose will confirm before sending the first message
when using --compose.
• auto is equivalent to cc + compose
Default is the value of sendemail.confirm configuration
value; if that is unspecified, default to auto unless any of
the suppress options have been specified, in which case
default to compose.
--dry-run
Do everything except actually send the emails.
--[no-]format-patch
When an argument may be understood either as a reference or
as a file name, choose to understand it as a format-patch
argument (--format-patch) or as a file name
(--no-format-patch). By default, when such a conflict occurs,
git send-email will fail.
--quiet
Make git-send-email less verbose. One line per email should
be all that is output.
--[no-]validate
Perform sanity checks on patches. Currently, validation means
the following:
• Invoke the sendemail-validate hook if present (see
githooks(5)).
• Warn of patches that contain lines longer than 998
characters unless a suitable transfer encoding (auto,
base64, or quoted-printable) is used; this is due to SMTP
limits as described by
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5322.txt .
Default is the value of sendemail.validate; if this is not
set, default to --validate.
--force
Send emails even if safety checks would prevent it.
Information
--dump-aliases
Instead of the normal operation, dump the shorthand alias
names from the configured alias file(s), one per line in
alphabetical order. Note that this only includes the alias
name and not its expanded email addresses. See
sendemail.aliasesFile for more information about aliases.
CONFIGURATION
Everything below this line in this section is selectively
included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the
same as what’s found there:
sendemail.identity
A configuration identity. When given, causes values in the
sendemail.<identity> subsection to take precedence over
values in the sendemail section. The default identity is the
value of sendemail.identity.
sendemail.smtpEncryption
See git-send-email(1) for description. Note that this setting
is not subject to the identity mechanism.
sendemail.smtpSSLCertPath
Path to ca-certificates (either a directory or a single
file). Set it to an empty string to disable certificate
verification.
sendemail.<identity>.*
Identity-specific versions of the sendemail.* parameters
found below, taking precedence over those when this identity
is selected, through either the command-line or
sendemail.identity.
sendemail.multiEdit
If true (default), a single editor instance will be spawned
to edit files you have to edit (patches when --annotate is
used, and the summary when --compose is used). If false,
files will be edited one after the other, spawning a new
editor each time.
sendemail.confirm
Sets the default for whether to confirm before sending. Must
be one of always, never, cc, compose, or auto. See --confirm
in the git-send-email(1) documentation for the meaning of
these values.
sendemail.aliasesFile
To avoid typing long email addresses, point this to one or
more email aliases files. You must also supply
sendemail.aliasFileType.
sendemail.aliasFileType
Format of the file(s) specified in sendemail.aliasesFile.
Must be one of mutt, mailrc, pine, elm, gnus, or sendmail.
What an alias file in each format looks like can be found in
the documentation of the email program of the same name. The
differences and limitations from the standard formats are
described below:
sendmail
• Quoted aliases and quoted addresses are not
supported: lines that contain a " symbol are ignored.
• Redirection to a file (/path/name) or pipe (|command)
is not supported.
• File inclusion (:include: /path/name) is not
supported.
• Warnings are printed on the standard error output for
any explicitly unsupported constructs, and any other
lines that are not recognized by the parser.
sendemail.annotate, sendemail.bcc, sendemail.cc, sendemail.ccCmd,
sendemail.chainReplyTo, sendemail.envelopeSender, sendemail.from,
sendemail.headerCmd, sendemail.signedOffByCc, sendemail.smtpPass,
sendemail.suppressCc, sendemail.suppressFrom, sendemail.to,
sendemail.toCmd, sendemail.smtpDomain, sendemail.smtpServer,
sendemail.smtpServerPort, sendemail.smtpServerOption,
sendemail.smtpUser, sendemail.thread, sendemail.transferEncoding,
sendemail.validate, sendemail.xmailer
These configuration variables all provide a default for
git-send-email(1) command-line options. See its documentation
for details.
sendemail.signedOffCc (deprecated)
Deprecated alias for sendemail.signedOffByCc.
sendemail.smtpBatchSize
Number of messages to be sent per connection, after that a
relogin will happen. If the value is 0 or undefined, send all
messages in one connection. See also the --batch-size option
of git-send-email(1).
sendemail.smtpReloginDelay
Seconds to wait before reconnecting to the smtp server. See
also the --relogin-delay option of git-send-email(1).
sendemail.forbidSendmailVariables
To avoid common misconfiguration mistakes, git-send-email(1)
will abort with a warning if any configuration options for
"sendmail" exist. Set this variable to bypass the check.
EXAMPLES
Use gmail as the smtp server
To use git send-email to send your patches through the GMail SMTP
server, edit ~/.gitconfig to specify your account settings:
[sendemail]
smtpEncryption = tls
smtpServer = smtp.gmail.com
smtpUser = yourname@gmail.com
smtpServerPort = 587
If you have multi-factor authentication set up on your Gmail
account, you can generate an app-specific password for use with
git send-email. Visit
https://security.google.com/settings/security/apppasswords to
create it.
Once your commits are ready to be sent to the mailing list, run
the following commands:
$ git format-patch --cover-letter -M origin/master -o outgoing/
$ edit outgoing/0000-*
$ git send-email outgoing/*
The first time you run it, you will be prompted for your
credentials. Enter the app-specific or your regular password as
appropriate. If you have credential helper configured (see
git-credential(1)), the password will be saved in the credential
store so you won’t have to type it the next time.
Note: the following core Perl modules that may be installed with
your distribution of Perl are required: MIME::Base64,
MIME::QuotedPrint, Net::Domain and Net::SMTP. These additional
Perl modules are also required: Authen::SASL and Mail::Address.
SEE ALSO
git-format-patch(1), git-imap-send(1), mbox(5)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
COLOPHON
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2024-06-14. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2024-06-12.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.45.2.492.gd63586 2024-06-12 GIT-SEND-EMAIL(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-config(1), git-format-patch(1), git-imap-send(1), git-send-email(1), stg-email(1), githooks(5), giteveryday(7), gitworkflows(7)