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