Provided by: git-email_2.34.1-1ubuntu1.10_all 
NAME
git-send-email - Send a collection of patches as emails
SYNOPSIS
git send-email [<options>] <file|directory|rev-list 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.
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, Subject, 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 From, Subject, and In-Reply-To headers 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 the encryption to use, either ssl or tls. Any other value reverts to plain
SMTP. 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|cc|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.
--[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 http://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, this only includes the alias
name and not its expanded email addresses. See sendemail.aliasesfile for more
information about aliases.
CONFIGURATION
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, or 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.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 previous section for the meaning of these
values.
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 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.
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