1.. _email_clients: 2 3Email clients info for Linux 4============================ 5 6Git 7--- 8 9These days most developers use ``git send-email`` instead of regular 10email clients. The man page for this is quite good. On the receiving 11end, maintainers use ``git am`` to apply the patches. 12 13If you are new to ``git`` then send your first patch to yourself. Save it 14as raw text including all the headers. Run ``git am raw_email.txt`` and 15then review the changelog with ``git log``. When that works then send 16the patch to the appropriate mailing list(s). 17 18General Preferences 19------------------- 20 21Patches for the Linux kernel are submitted via email, preferably as 22inline text in the body of the email. Some maintainers accept 23attachments, but then the attachments should have content-type 24``text/plain``. However, attachments are generally frowned upon because 25it makes quoting portions of the patch more difficult in the patch 26review process. 27 28Email clients that are used for Linux kernel patches should send the 29patch text untouched. For example, they should not modify or delete tabs 30or spaces, even at the beginning or end of lines. 31 32Don't send patches with ``format=flowed``. This can cause unexpected 33and unwanted line breaks. 34 35Don't let your email client do automatic word wrapping for you. 36This can also corrupt your patch. 37 38Email clients should not modify the character set encoding of the text. 39Emailed patches should be in ASCII or UTF-8 encoding only. 40If you configure your email client to send emails with UTF-8 encoding, 41you avoid some possible charset problems. 42 43Email clients should generate and maintain References: or In-Reply-To: 44headers so that mail threading is not broken. 45 46Copy-and-paste (or cut-and-paste) usually does not work for patches 47because tabs are converted to spaces. Using xclipboard, xclip, and/or 48xcutsel may work, but it's best to test this for yourself or just avoid 49copy-and-paste. 50 51Don't use PGP/GPG signatures in mail that contains patches. 52This breaks many scripts that read and apply the patches. 53(This should be fixable.) 54 55It's a good idea to send a patch to yourself, save the received message, 56and successfully apply it with 'patch' before sending patches to Linux 57mailing lists. 58 59 60Some email client (MUA) hints 61----------------------------- 62 63Here are some specific MUA configuration hints for editing and sending 64patches for the Linux kernel. These are not meant to be complete 65software package configuration summaries. 66 67 68Legend: 69 70- TUI = text-based user interface 71- GUI = graphical user interface 72 73Alpine (TUI) 74************ 75 76Config options: 77 78In the :menuselection:`Sending Preferences` section: 79 80- :menuselection:`Do Not Send Flowed Text` must be ``enabled`` 81- :menuselection:`Strip Whitespace Before Sending` must be ``disabled`` 82 83When composing the message, the cursor should be placed where the patch 84should appear, and then pressing :kbd:`CTRL-R` let you specify the patch file 85to insert into the message. 86 87Claws Mail (GUI) 88**************** 89 90Works. Some people use this successfully for patches. 91 92To insert a patch use :menuselection:`Message-->Insert` File (:kbd:`CTRL-I`) 93or an external editor. 94 95If the inserted patch has to be edited in the Claws composition window 96"Auto wrapping" in 97:menuselection:`Configuration-->Preferences-->Compose-->Wrapping` should be 98disabled. 99 100Evolution (GUI) 101*************** 102 103Some people use this successfully for patches. 104 105When composing mail select: Preformat 106 from :menuselection:`Format-->Paragraph Style-->Preformatted` (:kbd:`CTRL-7`) 107 or the toolbar 108 109Then use: 110:menuselection:`Insert-->Text File...` (:kbd:`ALT-N x`) 111to insert the patch. 112 113You can also ``diff -Nru old.c new.c | xclip``, select 114:menuselection:`Preformat`, then paste with the middle button. 115 116Kmail (GUI) 117*********** 118 119Some people use Kmail successfully for patches. 120 121The default setting of not composing in HTML is appropriate; do not 122enable it. 123 124When composing an email, under options, uncheck "word wrap". The only 125disadvantage is any text you type in the email will not be word-wrapped 126so you will have to manually word wrap text before the patch. The easiest 127way around this is to compose your email with word wrap enabled, then save 128it as a draft. Once you pull it up again from your drafts it is now hard 129word-wrapped and you can uncheck "word wrap" without losing the existing 130wrapping. 131 132At the bottom of your email, put the commonly-used patch delimiter before 133inserting your patch: three hyphens (``---``). 134 135Then from the :menuselection:`Message` menu item, select insert file and 136choose your patch. 137As an added bonus you can customise the message creation toolbar menu 138and put the :menuselection:`insert file` icon there. 139 140Make the composer window wide enough so that no lines wrap. As of 141KMail 1.13.5 (KDE 4.5.4), KMail will apply word wrapping when sending 142the email if the lines wrap in the composer window. Having word wrapping 143disabled in the Options menu isn't enough. Thus, if your patch has very 144long lines, you must make the composer window very wide before sending 145the email. See: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174034 146 147You can safely GPG sign attachments, but inlined text is preferred for 148patches so do not GPG sign them. Signing patches that have been inserted 149as inlined text will make them tricky to extract from their 7-bit encoding. 150 151If you absolutely must send patches as attachments instead of inlining 152them as text, right click on the attachment and select properties, and 153highlight :menuselection:`Suggest automatic display` to make the attachment 154inlined to make it more viewable. 155 156When saving patches that are sent as inlined text, select the email that 157contains the patch from the message list pane, right click and select 158:menuselection:`save as`. You can use the whole email unmodified as a patch 159if it was properly composed. There is no option currently to save the email 160when you are actually viewing it in its own window -- there has been a request 161filed at kmail's bugzilla and hopefully this will be addressed. Emails are 162saved as read-write for user only so you will have to chmod them to make them 163group and world readable if you copy them elsewhere. 164 165Lotus Notes (GUI) 166***************** 167 168Run away from it. 169 170IBM Verse (Web GUI) 171******************* 172 173See Lotus Notes. 174 175Mutt (TUI) 176********** 177 178Plenty of Linux developers use ``mutt``, so it must work pretty well. 179 180Mutt doesn't come with an editor, so whatever editor you use should be 181used in a way that there are no automatic linebreaks. Most editors have 182an :menuselection:`insert file` option that inserts the contents of a file 183unaltered. 184 185To use ``vim`` with mutt:: 186 187 set editor="vi" 188 189If using xclip, type the command:: 190 191 :set paste 192 193before middle button or shift-insert or use:: 194 195 :r filename 196 197if you want to include the patch inline. 198(a)ttach works fine without ``set paste``. 199 200You can also generate patches with ``git format-patch`` and then use Mutt 201to send them:: 202 203 $ mutt -H 0001-some-bug-fix.patch 204 205Config options: 206 207It should work with default settings. 208However, it's a good idea to set the ``send_charset`` to:: 209 210 set send_charset="us-ascii:utf-8" 211 212Mutt is highly customizable. Here is a minimum configuration to start 213using Mutt to send patches through Gmail:: 214 215 # .muttrc 216 # ================ IMAP ==================== 217 set imap_user = 'yourusername@gmail.com' 218 set imap_pass = 'yourpassword' 219 set spoolfile = imaps://imap.gmail.com/INBOX 220 set folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com/ 221 set record="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Sent Mail" 222 set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Drafts" 223 set mbox="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/All Mail" 224 225 # ================ SMTP ==================== 226 set smtp_url = "smtp://username@smtp.gmail.com:587/" 227 set smtp_pass = $imap_pass 228 set ssl_force_tls = yes # Require encrypted connection 229 230 # ================ Composition ==================== 231 set editor = `echo \$EDITOR` 232 set edit_headers = yes # See the headers when editing 233 set charset = UTF-8 # value of $LANG; also fallback for send_charset 234 # Sender, email address, and sign-off line must match 235 unset use_domain # because joe@localhost is just embarrassing 236 set realname = "YOUR NAME" 237 set from = "username@gmail.com" 238 set use_from = yes 239 240The Mutt docs have lots more information: 241 242 http://dev.mutt.org/trac/wiki/UseCases/Gmail 243 244 http://dev.mutt.org/doc/manual.html 245 246Pine (TUI) 247********** 248 249Pine has had some whitespace truncation issues in the past, but these 250should all be fixed now. 251 252Use alpine (pine's successor) if you can. 253 254Config options: 255 256- ``quell-flowed-text`` is needed for recent versions 257- the ``no-strip-whitespace-before-send`` option is needed 258 259 260Sylpheed (GUI) 261************** 262 263- Works well for inlining text (or using attachments). 264- Allows use of an external editor. 265- Is slow on large folders. 266- Won't do TLS SMTP auth over a non-SSL connection. 267- Has a helpful ruler bar in the compose window. 268- Adding addresses to address book doesn't understand the display name 269 properly. 270 271Thunderbird (GUI) 272***************** 273 274Thunderbird is an Outlook clone that likes to mangle text, but there are ways 275to coerce it into behaving. 276 277- Allow use of an external editor: 278 The easiest thing to do with Thunderbird and patches is to use an 279 "external editor" extension and then just use your favorite ``$EDITOR`` 280 for reading/merging patches into the body text. To do this, download 281 and install the extension, then add a button for it using 282 :menuselection:`View-->Toolbars-->Customize...` and finally just click on it 283 when in the :menuselection:`Compose` dialog. 284 285 Please note that "external editor" requires that your editor must not 286 fork, or in other words, the editor must not return before closing. 287 You may have to pass additional flags or change the settings of your 288 editor. Most notably if you are using gvim then you must pass the -f 289 option to gvim by putting ``/usr/bin/gvim -f`` (if the binary is in 290 ``/usr/bin``) to the text editor field in :menuselection:`external editor` 291 settings. If you are using some other editor then please read its manual 292 to find out how to do this. 293 294To beat some sense out of the internal editor, do this: 295 296- Edit your Thunderbird config settings so that it won't use ``format=flowed``. 297 Go to :menuselection:`edit-->preferences-->advanced-->config editor` to bring up 298 the thunderbird's registry editor. 299 300- Set ``mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed`` to ``false`` 301 302- Set ``mailnews.wraplength`` from ``72`` to ``0`` 303 304- :menuselection:`View-->Message Body As-->Plain Text` 305 306- :menuselection:`View-->Character Encoding-->Unicode (UTF-8)` 307 308TkRat (GUI) 309*********** 310 311Works. Use "Insert file..." or external editor. 312 313Gmail (Web GUI) 314*************** 315 316Does not work for sending patches. 317 318Gmail web client converts tabs to spaces automatically. 319 320At the same time it wraps lines every 78 chars with CRLF style line breaks 321although tab2space problem can be solved with external editor. 322 323Another problem is that Gmail will base64-encode any message that has a 324non-ASCII character. That includes things like European names. 325