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Show HN: Learn to use email with Git

git-send-email.io

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Re: Show HN: Learn to use email with Git

#11

Post by sevensor »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #5
sevensor wrote: post #4

One thing a lot of email providers (at least gmail and fastmail) do is let you create application passwords that you can use for specific purposes. So if you're at all queasy about having your password in plain text on the hard drive, you can create a special password just for git. Edit: you don't have to set up a terminal email client at this point, but if you figure out how to use git-send-email, you're just inches…

You can also omit it and type it in each time you use git send-email, or you can set it up with your on-site keyring using git-credential: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitcredentials

Ah, that's quite nice. I like the ability to strike your own balance between convenience and paranoia afforded by git-credential-cache.

Re: Show HN: Learn to use email with Git

#12

Post by Spivak »

subway wrote: post #9
sevensor wrote: post #4

One thing a lot of email providers (at least gmail and fastmail) do is let you create application passwords that you can use for specific purposes. So if you're at all queasy about having your password in plain text on the hard drive, you can create a special password just for git. Edit: you don't have to set up a terminal email client at this point, but if you figure out how to use git-send-email, you're just inches…

The Google implementation of application specific passwords is horrible . There's nothing application specific about it -- it's valid for at least mail, calendar, and contacts, with no way to limit the scope. It ends up being a password that effectively bypasses all MFA on your Google account. Where do you store such a password? That's a powerful credential to be regularly unlocking. I should be able to create a cred…

If you want that level of granularity then you pretty much have to write an app but it's absolutely possible.

https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/auth/scopes

Re: Show HN: Learn to use email with Git

#13

Post by stronglikedan »

OJFord wrote: post #2

No JS - I was baffled - did not know about ` ">`. Nice. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/la...

IMHO, the single-most underused HTML attribute. I get annoyed when I have to aim for the tiny box, instead of the nice long string of text next to it. Although, I can't count the number of times I was guilty of omitting it many moons ago.

Re: Show HN: Learn to use email with Git

#16

Post by zepolen »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #14
OJFord wrote: post #2

No JS - I was baffled - did not know about ` ">`. Nice. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/la...

It seems to have a cost though, how do I link to a specific page? Anti-snark edit: what's the URL to a specific step?

Re: Show HN: Learn to use email with Git

#18

Post by jolmg »

sevensor wrote: post #4

One thing a lot of email providers (at least gmail and fastmail) do is let you create application passwords that you can use for specific purposes. So if you're at all queasy about having your password in plain text on the hard drive, you can create a special password just for git. Edit: you don't have to set up a terminal email client at this point, but if you figure out how to use git-send-email, you're just inches…

I haven't set this up, but looking at the manpages, it seems you can set git to obtain the password from your password manager (which should keep your password encrypted). From gitcredentials(7):

> Without any credential helpers defined, Git will try the following strategies to ask the user for usernames and passwords:

> 1. If the GIT_ASKPASS environment variable is set, the program specified by the variable is invoked. A suitable prompt is provided to the program on the command line, and the user’s input is read from its standard output.

> 2. Otherwise, if the core.askPass configuration variable is set, its value is used as above.

> 3. Otherwise, if the SSH_ASKPASS environment variable is set, its value is used as above.

> 4. Otherwise, the user is prompted on the terminal.

So, for example, if you're using `pass`, the password-store, you can just set one of these to `pass smtp/me@example.com`, and pass will prompt you for your decryption password for your smtp password.

Re: Show HN: Learn to use email with Git

#19

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

kbeckmann wrote: post #17

Great guide but there seems to be a typo/mistake regarding how to save the smtp password in step 2/gmail: should use sendemail.smtpPass instead of the non existing sendemail.password.

Good catch! Want a chance to try out your email skills and send a fix to ~sircmpwn/public-inbox@lists.sr.ht? The git repo is here: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/git-send-email.io. If you're not interested, I'll push the fix, but figured I'd give you a chance to get credit for it.

Re: Show HN: Learn to use email with Git

#20

Post by kbeckmann »

In the e-mail reply that you get when following the guide you get something to copy paste that looks like this:

    git send-email -v2 ...
I tried to find documentation regarding the -v[0-9]+ parameter but couldn't find it at all. What am I missing in the docs? Seems a lot of guides recommend people to use this feature, however there is not a word regarding it in the git docs. It seems that it takes a positive integer as a parameter and adds it to the [PATCH v1] prefix in the subject.
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