docs: add a paragraph explaining the `sendmailCmd` option of sendemail
`sendmailCmd` is a configuration option in `git-send-email` that allows users to send emails using an external application that supports sendmail-like commands. This ability has been very useful to support proprietary email APIs without modifying the `git-send-email` codebase. It is also useful for users who prefer to use another SMTP client instead of the SMTP perl library used by `git-send-email`. This commit adds a paragraph to the documentation explaining this option. Signed-off-by: Aditya Garg <gargaditya08@live.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Aditya Garg committed
Jun 30, 2025 at 18:06 UTC
95ce81f68d519339fc57c0f321845527792cade9
1 file changed
+29
Documentation/git-send-email.adoc
+29
index b31145901c..6556f949a1 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-send-email.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/git-send-email.adoc
@@ -619,6 +619,35 @@ These additional Perl modules are also required:
https://metacpan.org/pod/Authen::SASL[Authen::SASL] and
https://metacpan.org/pod/Mail::Address[Mail::Address].
+Exploiting the `sendmailCmd` option of `git send-email`
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Apart from sending emails via an SMTP server, `git send-email` can also send
+emails through any application that supports sendmail-like commands. You can
+read documentation of `--sendmail-cmd=<command>` above for more information.
+This ability can be very useful if you want to use another application as an
+SMTP client for `git send-email`, or if your email provider uses proprietary
+APIs instead of SMTP to send emails.
+
+As an example, lets see how to configure https://marlam.de/msmtp/[msmtp], a
+popular SMTP client found in many Linux distributions. Edit `~/.gitconfig`
+to instruct `git-send-email` to use it for sending emails.
+
+----
+[sendemail]
+ sendmailCmd = /usr/bin/msmtp # Change this to the path where msmtp is installed
+----
+
+Links of a few such community maintained helpers are:
+
+ - https://marlam.de/msmtp/[msmtp]
+ (popular SMTP client with many features, available for Linux and macOS)
+
+ - https://github.com/AdityaGarg8/git-credential-email[git-protonmail]
+ (cross platform client that can send emails using the ProtonMail API)
+
+ - https://github.com/AdityaGarg8/git-credential-email[git-msgraph]
+ (cross platform client that can send emails using the Microsoft Graph API)
SEE ALSO
--------