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> How is git designed to use email? https://git-scm.com/docs/git-send-email https://git-scm.com/docs/git-send-email https://git-scm.com/docs/git-format-patch

• cnst 6y ago
  Still for those unfamiliar -- these are standard utilities that are part of every git installation. There's also `git am` (as in "apply mail"), also standard part of git. https://git-scm.com/docs/git-am https://git-scm.com/docs/git-am The whole workflow of git is based around email: the commit message requires a Subject line, then a blank line, followed by the description of what the patch attempts to solve. The reason patches are required to be sent as plain-text for Linux and OpenBSD is that you can save the whole email, and pass the contents of the whole email to git (in case of Linux) or the patch(1) command (in case of OpenBSD -- the patch command will automatically ignores all the headers and non-patch part of the body of the email). This guarantees you won't end up with undocumented random patches on your filesystem -- each patch has the accompanying documentation as part of the same file, metadata on authorship etc. But if you use weird encodings, then the workflow breaks down.