Based on kernel version 4.9. Page generated on 2016-12-21 14:33 EST.
1 .. _email_clients: 2 3 Email clients info for Linux 4 ============================ 5 6 Git 7 --- 8 9 These days most developers use ``git send-email`` instead of regular 10 email clients. The man page for this is quite good. On the receiving 11 end, maintainers use ``git am`` to apply the patches. 12 13 If you are new to ``git`` then send your first patch to yourself. Save it 14 as raw text including all the headers. Run ``git am raw_email.txt`` and 15 then review the changelog with ``git log``. When that works then send 16 the patch to the appropriate mailing list(s). 17 18 General Preferences 19 ------------------- 20 21 Patches for the Linux kernel are submitted via email, preferably as 22 inline text in the body of the email. Some maintainers accept 23 attachments, but then the attachments should have content-type 24 ``text/plain``. However, attachments are generally frowned upon because 25 it makes quoting portions of the patch more difficult in the patch 26 review process. 27 28 Email clients that are used for Linux kernel patches should send the 29 patch text untouched. For example, they should not modify or delete tabs 30 or spaces, even at the beginning or end of lines. 31 32 Don't send patches with ``format=flowed``. This can cause unexpected 33 and unwanted line breaks. 34 35 Don't let your email client do automatic word wrapping for you. 36 This can also corrupt your patch. 37 38 Email clients should not modify the character set encoding of the text. 39 Emailed patches should be in ASCII or UTF-8 encoding only. 40 If you configure your email client to send emails with UTF-8 encoding, 41 you avoid some possible charset problems. 42 43 Email clients should generate and maintain References: or In-Reply-To: 44 headers so that mail threading is not broken. 45 46 Copy-and-paste (or cut-and-paste) usually does not work for patches 47 because tabs are converted to spaces. Using xclipboard, xclip, and/or 48 xcutsel may work, but it's best to test this for yourself or just avoid 49 copy-and-paste. 50 51 Don't use PGP/GPG signatures in mail that contains patches. 52 This breaks many scripts that read and apply the patches. 53 (This should be fixable.) 54 55 It's a good idea to send a patch to yourself, save the received message, 56 and successfully apply it with 'patch' before sending patches to Linux 57 mailing lists. 58 59 60 Some email client (MUA) hints 61 ----------------------------- 62 63 Here are some specific MUA configuration hints for editing and sending 64 patches for the Linux kernel. These are not meant to be complete 65 software package configuration summaries. 66 67 68 Legend: 69 70 - TUI = text-based user interface 71 - GUI = graphical user interface 72 73 Alpine (TUI) 74 ************ 75 76 Config options: 77 78 In 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 83 When composing the message, the cursor should be placed where the patch 84 should appear, and then pressing :kbd:`CTRL-R` let you specify the patch file 85 to insert into the message. 86 87 Claws Mail (GUI) 88 **************** 89 90 Works. Some people use this successfully for patches. 91 92 To insert a patch use :menuselection:`Message-->Insert` File (:kbd:`CTRL-I`) 93 or an external editor. 94 95 If the inserted patch has to be edited in the Claws composition window 96 "Auto wrapping" in 97 :menuselection:`Configuration-->Preferences-->Compose-->Wrapping` should be 98 disabled. 99 100 Evolution (GUI) 101 *************** 102 103 Some people use this successfully for patches. 104 105 When composing mail select: Preformat 106 from :menuselection:`Format-->Paragraph Style-->Preformatted` (:kbd:`CTRL-7`) 107 or the toolbar 108 109 Then use: 110 :menuselection:`Insert-->Text File...` (:kbd:`ALT-N x`) 111 to insert the patch. 112 113 You can also ``diff -Nru old.c new.c | xclip``, select 114 :menuselection:`Preformat`, then paste with the middle button. 115 116 Kmail (GUI) 117 *********** 118 119 Some people use Kmail successfully for patches. 120 121 The default setting of not composing in HTML is appropriate; do not 122 enable it. 123 124 When composing an email, under options, uncheck "word wrap". The only 125 disadvantage is any text you type in the email will not be word-wrapped 126 so you will have to manually word wrap text before the patch. The easiest 127 way around this is to compose your email with word wrap enabled, then save 128 it as a draft. Once you pull it up again from your drafts it is now hard 129 word-wrapped and you can uncheck "word wrap" without losing the existing 130 wrapping. 131 132 At the bottom of your email, put the commonly-used patch delimiter before 133 inserting your patch: three hyphens (``---``). 134 135 Then from the :menuselection:`Message` menu item, select insert file and 136 choose your patch. 137 As an added bonus you can customise the message creation toolbar menu 138 and put the :menuselection:`insert file` icon there. 139 140 Make the composer window wide enough so that no lines wrap. As of 141 KMail 1.13.5 (KDE 4.5.4), KMail will apply word wrapping when sending 142 the email if the lines wrap in the composer window. Having word wrapping 143 disabled in the Options menu isn't enough. Thus, if your patch has very 144 long lines, you must make the composer window very wide before sending 145 the email. See: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174034 146 147 You can safely GPG sign attachments, but inlined text is preferred for 148 patches so do not GPG sign them. Signing patches that have been inserted 149 as inlined text will make them tricky to extract from their 7-bit encoding. 150 151 If you absolutely must send patches as attachments instead of inlining 152 them as text, right click on the attachment and select properties, and 153 highlight :menuselection:`Suggest automatic display` to make the attachment 154 inlined to make it more viewable. 155 156 When saving patches that are sent as inlined text, select the email that 157 contains 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 159 if it was properly composed. There is no option currently to save the email 160 when you are actually viewing it in its own window -- there has been a request 161 filed at kmail's bugzilla and hopefully this will be addressed. Emails are 162 saved as read-write for user only so you will have to chmod them to make them 163 group and world readable if you copy them elsewhere. 164 165 Lotus Notes (GUI) 166 ***************** 167 168 Run away from it. 169 170 Mutt (TUI) 171 ********** 172 173 Plenty of Linux developers use ``mutt``, so it must work pretty well. 174 175 Mutt doesn't come with an editor, so whatever editor you use should be 176 used in a way that there are no automatic linebreaks. Most editors have 177 an :menuselection:`insert file` option that inserts the contents of a file 178 unaltered. 179 180 To use ``vim`` with mutt:: 181 182 set editor="vi" 183 184 If using xclip, type the command:: 185 186 :set paste 187 188 before middle button or shift-insert or use:: 189 190 :r filename 191 192 if you want to include the patch inline. 193 (a)ttach works fine without ``set paste``. 194 195 You can also generate patches with ``git format-patch`` and then use Mutt 196 to send them:: 197 198 $ mutt -H 0001-some-bug-fix.patch 199 200 Config options: 201 202 It should work with default settings. 203 However, it's a good idea to set the ``send_charset`` to:: 204 205 set send_charset="us-ascii:utf-8" 206 207 Mutt is highly customizable. Here is a minimum configuration to start 208 using Mutt to send patches through Gmail:: 209 210 # .muttrc 211 # ================ IMAP ==================== 212 set imap_user = 'yourusername@gmail.com' 213 set imap_pass = 'yourpassword' 214 set spoolfile = imaps://imap.gmail.com/INBOX 215 set folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com/ 216 set record="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Sent Mail" 217 set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Drafts" 218 set mbox="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/All Mail" 219 220 # ================ SMTP ==================== 221 set smtp_url = "smtp://username@smtp.gmail.com:587/" 222 set smtp_pass = $imap_pass 223 set ssl_force_tls = yes # Require encrypted connection 224 225 # ================ Composition ==================== 226 set editor = `echo \$EDITOR` 227 set edit_headers = yes # See the headers when editing 228 set charset = UTF-8 # value of $LANG; also fallback for send_charset 229 # Sender, email address, and sign-off line must match 230 unset use_domain # because joe@localhost is just embarrassing 231 set realname = "YOUR NAME" 232 set from = "username@gmail.com" 233 set use_from = yes 234 235 The Mutt docs have lots more information: 236 237 http://dev.mutt.org/trac/wiki/UseCases/Gmail 238 239 http://dev.mutt.org/doc/manual.html 240 241 Pine (TUI) 242 ********** 243 244 Pine has had some whitespace truncation issues in the past, but these 245 should all be fixed now. 246 247 Use alpine (pine's successor) if you can. 248 249 Config options: 250 251 - ``quell-flowed-text`` is needed for recent versions 252 - the ``no-strip-whitespace-before-send`` option is needed 253 254 255 Sylpheed (GUI) 256 ************** 257 258 - Works well for inlining text (or using attachments). 259 - Allows use of an external editor. 260 - Is slow on large folders. 261 - Won't do TLS SMTP auth over a non-SSL connection. 262 - Has a helpful ruler bar in the compose window. 263 - Adding addresses to address book doesn't understand the display name 264 properly. 265 266 Thunderbird (GUI) 267 ***************** 268 269 Thunderbird is an Outlook clone that likes to mangle text, but there are ways 270 to coerce it into behaving. 271 272 - Allow use of an external editor: 273 The easiest thing to do with Thunderbird and patches is to use an 274 "external editor" extension and then just use your favorite ``$EDITOR`` 275 for reading/merging patches into the body text. To do this, download 276 and install the extension, then add a button for it using 277 :menuselection:`View-->Toolbars-->Customize...` and finally just click on it 278 when in the :menuselection:`Compose` dialog. 279 280 Please note that "external editor" requires that your editor must not 281 fork, or in other words, the editor must not return before closing. 282 You may have to pass additional flags or change the settings of your 283 editor. Most notably if you are using gvim then you must pass the -f 284 option to gvim by putting ``/usr/bin/gvim -f`` (if the binary is in 285 ``/usr/bin``) to the text editor field in :menuselection:`external editor` 286 settings. If you are using some other editor then please read its manual 287 to find out how to do this. 288 289 To beat some sense out of the internal editor, do this: 290 291 - Edit your Thunderbird config settings so that it won't use ``format=flowed``. 292 Go to :menuselection:`edit-->preferences-->advanced-->config editor` to bring up 293 the thunderbird's registry editor. 294 295 - Set ``mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed`` to ``false`` 296 297 - Set ``mailnews.wraplength`` from ``72`` to ``0`` 298 299 - :menuselection:`View-->Message Body As-->Plain Text` 300 301 - :menuselection:`View-->Character Encoding-->Unicode (UTF-8)` 302 303 TkRat (GUI) 304 *********** 305 306 Works. Use "Insert file..." or external editor. 307 308 Gmail (Web GUI) 309 *************** 310 311 Does not work for sending patches. 312 313 Gmail web client converts tabs to spaces automatically. 314 315 At the same time it wraps lines every 78 chars with CRLF style line breaks 316 although tab2space problem can be solved with external editor. 317 318 Another problem is that Gmail will base64-encode any message that has a 319 non-ASCII character. That includes things like European names.