1Email clients info for Linux 2====================================================================== 3 4General Preferences 5---------------------------------------------------------------------- 6Patches for the Linux kernel are submitted via email, preferably as 7inline text in the body of the email. Some maintainers accept 8attachments, but then the attachments should have content-type 9"text/plain". However, attachments are generally frowned upon because 10it makes quoting portions of the patch more difficult in the patch 11review process. 12 13Email clients that are used for Linux kernel patches should send the 14patch text untouched. For example, they should not modify or delete tabs 15or spaces, even at the beginning or end of lines. 16 17Don't send patches with "format=flowed". This can cause unexpected 18and unwanted line breaks. 19 20Don't let your email client do automatic word wrapping for you. 21This can also corrupt your patch. 22 23Email clients should not modify the character set encoding of the text. 24Emailed patches should be in ASCII or UTF-8 encoding only. 25If you configure your email client to send emails with UTF-8 encoding, 26you avoid some possible charset problems. 27 28Email clients should generate and maintain References: or In-Reply-To: 29headers so that mail threading is not broken. 30 31Copy-and-paste (or cut-and-paste) usually does not work for patches 32because tabs are converted to spaces. Using xclipboard, xclip, and/or 33xcutsel may work, but it's best to test this for yourself or just avoid 34copy-and-paste. 35 36Don't use PGP/GPG signatures in mail that contains patches. 37This breaks many scripts that read and apply the patches. 38(This should be fixable.) 39 40It's a good idea to send a patch to yourself, save the received message, 41and successfully apply it with 'patch' before sending patches to Linux 42mailing lists. 43 44 45Some email client (MUA) hints 46---------------------------------------------------------------------- 47Here are some specific MUA configuration hints for editing and sending 48patches for the Linux kernel. These are not meant to be complete 49software package configuration summaries. 50 51Legend: 52TUI = text-based user interface 53GUI = graphical user interface 54 55~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 56Alpine (TUI) 57 58Config options: 59In the "Sending Preferences" section: 60 61- "Do Not Send Flowed Text" must be enabled 62- "Strip Whitespace Before Sending" must be disabled 63 64When composing the message, the cursor should be placed where the patch 65should appear, and then pressing CTRL-R let you specify the patch file 66to insert into the message. 67 68~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 69Evolution (GUI) 70 71Some people use this successfully for patches. 72 73When composing mail select: Preformat 74 from Format->Heading->Preformatted (Ctrl-7) 75 or the toolbar 76 77Then use: 78 Insert->Text File... (Alt-n x) 79to insert the patch. 80 81You can also "diff -Nru old.c new.c | xclip", select Preformat, then 82paste with the middle button. 83 84~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 85Kmail (GUI) 86 87Some people use Kmail successfully for patches. 88 89The default setting of not composing in HTML is appropriate; do not 90enable it. 91 92When composing an email, under options, uncheck "word wrap". The only 93disadvantage is any text you type in the email will not be word-wrapped 94so you will have to manually word wrap text before the patch. The easiest 95way around this is to compose your email with word wrap enabled, then save 96it as a draft. Once you pull it up again from your drafts it is now hard 97word-wrapped and you can uncheck "word wrap" without losing the existing 98wrapping. 99 100At the bottom of your email, put the commonly-used patch delimiter before 101inserting your patch: three hyphens (---). 102 103Then from the "Message" menu item, select insert file and choose your patch. 104As an added bonus you can customise the message creation toolbar menu 105and put the "insert file" icon there. 106 107Make the the composer window wide enough so that no lines wrap. As of 108KMail 1.13.5 (KDE 4.5.4), KMail will apply word wrapping when sending 109the email if the lines wrap in the composer window. Having word wrapping 110disabled in the Options menu isn't enough. Thus, if your patch has very 111long lines, you must make the composer window very wide before sending 112the email. See: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174034 113 114You can safely GPG sign attachments, but inlined text is preferred for 115patches so do not GPG sign them. Signing patches that have been inserted 116as inlined text will make them tricky to extract from their 7-bit encoding. 117 118If you absolutely must send patches as attachments instead of inlining 119them as text, right click on the attachment and select properties, and 120highlight "Suggest automatic display" to make the attachment inlined to 121make it more viewable. 122 123When saving patches that are sent as inlined text, select the email that 124contains the patch from the message list pane, right click and select 125"save as". You can use the whole email unmodified as a patch if it was 126properly composed. There is no option currently to save the email when you 127are actually viewing it in its own window -- there has been a request filed 128at kmail's bugzilla and hopefully this will be addressed. Emails are saved 129as read-write for user only so you will have to chmod them to make them 130group and world readable if you copy them elsewhere. 131 132~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 133Lotus Notes (GUI) 134 135Run away from it. 136 137~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 138Mutt (TUI) 139 140Plenty of Linux developers use mutt, so it must work pretty well. 141 142Mutt doesn't come with an editor, so whatever editor you use should be 143used in a way that there are no automatic linebreaks. Most editors have 144an "insert file" option that inserts the contents of a file unaltered. 145 146To use 'vim' with mutt: 147 set editor="vi" 148 149 If using xclip, type the command 150 :set paste 151 before middle button or shift-insert or use 152 :r filename 153 154if you want to include the patch inline. 155(a)ttach works fine without "set paste". 156 157Config options: 158It should work with default settings. 159However, it's a good idea to set the "send_charset" to: 160 set send_charset="us-ascii:utf-8" 161 162~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 163Pine (TUI) 164 165Pine has had some whitespace truncation issues in the past, but these 166should all be fixed now. 167 168Use alpine (pine's successor) if you can. 169 170Config options: 171- quell-flowed-text is needed for recent versions 172- the "no-strip-whitespace-before-send" option is needed 173 174 175~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 176Sylpheed (GUI) 177 178- Works well for inlining text (or using attachments). 179- Allows use of an external editor. 180- Is slow on large folders. 181- Won't do TLS SMTP auth over a non-SSL connection. 182- Has a helpful ruler bar in the compose window. 183- Adding addresses to address book doesn't understand the display name 184 properly. 185 186~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 187Thunderbird (GUI) 188 189Thunderbird is an Outlook clone that likes to mangle text, but there are ways 190to coerce it into behaving. 191 192- Allows use of an external editor: 193 The easiest thing to do with Thunderbird and patches is to use an 194 "external editor" extension and then just use your favorite $EDITOR 195 for reading/merging patches into the body text. To do this, download 196 and install the extension, then add a button for it using 197 View->Toolbars->Customize... and finally just click on it when in the 198 Compose dialog. 199 200To beat some sense out of the internal editor, do this: 201 202- Edit your Thunderbird config settings so that it won't use format=flowed. 203 Go to "edit->preferences->advanced->config editor" to bring up the 204 thunderbird's registry editor, and set "mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed" to 205 "false". 206 207- Disable HTML Format: Set "mail.identity.id1.compose_html" to "false". 208 209- Enable "preformat" mode: Set "editor.quotesPreformatted" to "true". 210 211- Enable UTF8: Set "prefs.converted-to-utf8" to "true". 212 213- Install the "toggle wordwrap" extension. Download the file from: 214 https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/2351/ 215 Then go to "tools->add ons", select "install" at the bottom of the screen, 216 and browse to where you saved the .xul file. This adds an "Enable 217 Wordwrap" entry under the Options menu of the message composer. 218 219~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 220TkRat (GUI) 221 222Works. Use "Insert file..." or external editor. 223 224~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 225Gmail (Web GUI) 226 227Does not work for sending patches. 228 229Gmail web client converts tabs to spaces automatically. 230 231At the same time it wraps lines every 78 chars with CRLF style line breaks 232although tab2space problem can be solved with external editor. 233 234Another problem is that Gmail will base64-encode any message that has a 235non-ASCII character. That includes things like European names. 236 237 ### 238