Form Gui Editor Patch
- I got a bit bored over the week and decided to try out making a basic gui editor, so that in the future I wouldn't have to hardcode anymore gui.
- This runs inside your patch so you can build the interface and test it without. Who want an easy way to test their in-progress instruments, before hiring a UI designer. All I ask is that you credit me in some form, and provide a link to this page.
To adjust this using the local group policy editor. Reply To: Patch Lady – Simplification in the GUI. You can use BBCodes to format your content.
Introducing Kobo Patch GUIThis is a simple GUI for editing the unofficial kobo patch files. It is written in Python, and uses Tk/Tkinter for its interface.
The GUI is currently quite limited. It has the following features:
- Enable/Disable patches
- Disable all patches
- Checking for mutually exlusive options*
- Crude tooltip help
There is currently no way of making custom changes (such as changing margins, etc) or saving changes for the next version of patches. I hope to be able to create these features someday.
Download
Downloads are available from github here.
Installation/Usage
Unzip the archive to a folder of your choosing and run KoboPatchGUI.pyw.
Python 2.7.x or 3.4.x+ is required to run this GUI. For Windows users, a standard installation of Python should be sufficient. Linux users may require Tk from their distro's software repository. Mac OS X users will have to tell me if the program works or not, as I am unable to test.
The GUI works best with the latest versions of the Patch files provided by GeoffR, from version 3.19.5613. Note that GeoffR has added a feature in the patch files to assist this GUI, which was NOT in the initial release. It his highly recommended to download the latest version of the patch before using this GUI.
USE THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK. WHILE IT SHOULDN'T CAUSE ISSUES, I CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT IT WILL NOT.
Note that I am at best a part time hobby programmer. Therefore my code may not follow all best practices, or be all that efficient.
The code can be found at my Github account here. I welcome any improvements or added features.
I've got a series of patches I want to send to an open source project but I'm not able to figure out how to properly format an email. I tried running a git format-patch command then attached them all into an email from Thunderbird but they all got rejected because each patch is supposed to be a separate email in itself. I want to avoid the git email commands because I have code in the same tree that is private and some that I need to send, which means I need to be able to manually review each email before it is sent.
I want to keep using Thunderbird, but there seem to be problems with it since it wraps lines and makes patches unusable. I also tried setting up fetchmail and mutt, but after literally 10 hours of reading and trying I gave up. Is there a non-fetchmail and non-thunderbird solution for sending git patches?
3 Answers
git help format-patch has a section 'MUA-SPECIFIC HINTS' that mentions three approaches to specifically make Thunderbird usable with git:
- the Toggle Word Wrap add-on
- configure Thunderbird to not mangle patches
- or using an external editor
Let me generously paste the documentation of the Linux project. I'm not limiting it to Thunderbird because the title of you question indicates general interest, rather than Thunderbird only. Also, check the source for updates, maybe via this link, as it's likely that updates won't propagate to this answer.
Git
These days most developers use git send-email instead of regularemail clients. The man page for this is quite good. On the receivingend, maintainers use git am to apply the patches.
If you are new to git then send your first patch to yourself. Save itas raw text including all the headers. Run git am raw_email.txt andthen review the changelog with git log. When that works then sendthe patch to the appropriate mailing list(s).
General Preferences
Patches for the Linux kernel are submitted via email, preferably asinline text in the body of the email. Some maintainers acceptattachments, but then the attachments should have content-type'text/plain'. However, attachments are generally frowned upon becauseit makes quoting portions of the patch more difficult in the patchreview process.
Email clients that are used for Linux kernel patches should send thepatch text untouched. For example, they should not modify or delete tabsor spaces, even at the beginning or end of lines.
Don't send patches with 'format=flowed'. This can cause unexpectedand unwanted line breaks.
Don't let your email client do automatic word wrapping for you.This can also corrupt your patch.
Email clients should not modify the character set encoding of the text.Emailed patches should be in ASCII or UTF-8 encoding only.If you configure your email client to send emails with UTF-8 encoding,you avoid some possible charset problems.
Email clients should generate and maintain References: or In-Reply-To:headers so that mail threading is not broken.
Copy-and-paste (or cut-and-paste) usually does not work for patchesbecause tabs are converted to spaces. Using xclipboard, xclip, and/orxcutsel may work, but it's best to test this for yourself or just avoidcopy-and-paste.
Don't use PGP/GPG signatures in mail that contains patches.This breaks many scripts that read and apply the patches.(This should be fixable.)
It's a good idea to send a patch to yourself, save the received message,and successfully apply it with 'patch' before sending patches to Linuxmailing lists.
Some email client (MUA) hints
Here are some specific MUA configuration hints for editing and sendingpatches for the Linux kernel. These are not meant to be completesoftware package configuration summaries.
Legend:TUI = text-based user interfaceGUI = graphical user interface
Alpine (TUI)
Config options:In the 'Sending Preferences' section:
- 'Do Not Send Flowed Text' must be enabled
- 'Strip Whitespace Before Sending' must be disabled
When composing the message, the cursor should be placed where the patchshould appear, and then pressing CTRL-R let you specify the patch fileto insert into the message.
Claws Mail (GUI)
Works. Some people use this successfully for patches.
To insert a patch use Message->Insert File (CTRL+i) or an external editor.
If the inserted patch has to be edited in the Claws composition window'Auto wrapping' in Configuration->Preferences->Compose->Wrapping should bedisabled.
Evolution (GUI)
Some people use this successfully for patches.
When composing mail select: Preformat from Format->Paragraph Style->Preformatted (Ctrl-7) or the toolbar
Then use: Insert->Text File.. (Alt-n x)to insert the patch.
You can also 'diff -Nru old.c new.c xclip', select Preformat, thenpaste with the middle button.
Kmail (GUI)
Some people use Kmail successfully for patches.
The default setting of not composing in HTML is appropriate; do notenable it.
When composing an email, under options, uncheck 'word wrap'. The onlydisadvantage is any text you type in the email will not be word-wrappedso you will have to manually word wrap text before the patch. The easiestway around this is to compose your email with word wrap enabled, then saveit as a draft. Once you pull it up again from your drafts it is now hardword-wrapped and you can uncheck 'word wrap' without losing the existingwrapping.
At the bottom of your email, put the commonly-used patch delimiter beforeinserting your patch: three hyphens (---).
Then from the 'Message' menu item, select insert file and choose your patch.As an added bonus you can customise the message creation toolbar menuand put the 'insert file' icon there.
Make the composer window wide enough so that no lines wrap. As ofKMail 1.13.5 (KDE 4.5.4), KMail will apply word wrapping when sendingthe email if the lines wrap in the composer window. Having word wrappingdisabled in the Options menu isn't enough. Thus, if your patch has verylong lines, you must make the composer window very wide before sendingthe email. See: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=174034
You can safely GPG sign attachments, but inlined text is preferred forpatches so do not GPG sign them. Signing patches that have been insertedas inlined text will make them tricky to extract from their 7-bit encoding.
If you absolutely must send patches as attachments instead of inliningthem as text, right click on the attachment and select properties, andhighlight 'Suggest automatic display' to make the attachment inlined tomake it more viewable.
When saving patches that are sent as inlined text, select the email thatcontains the patch from the message list pane, right click and select'save as'. You can use the whole email unmodified as a patch if it wasproperly composed. There is no option currently to save the email when youare actually viewing it in its own window -- there has been a request filedat kmail's bugzilla and hopefully this will be addressed. Emails are savedas read-write for user only so you will have to chmod them to make themgroup and world readable if you copy them elsewhere.
Lotus Notes (GUI)
Run away from it.
Mutt (TUI)
Plenty of Linux developers use mutt, so it must work pretty well.
Mutt doesn't come with an editor, so whatever editor you use should beused in a way that there are no automatic linebreaks. Most editors havean 'insert file' option that inserts the contents of a file unaltered.
To use 'vim' with mutt: set editor='vi'
If using xclip, type the command :set paste before middle button or shift-insert or use :r filename
if you want to include the patch inline.(a)ttach works fine without 'set paste'.
You can also generate patches with 'git format-patch' and then use Muttto send them: $ mutt -H 0001-some-bug-fix.patch
Config options:It should work with default settings.However, it's a good idea to set the 'send_charset' to: set send_charset='us-ascii:utf-8'
Mutt is highly customizable. One piece wanted poster font download. Here is a minimum configuration to startusing Mutt to send patches through Gmail:
The Mutt docs have lots more information: http://dev.mutt.org/trac/wiki/UseCases/Gmailhttp://dev.mutt.org/doc/manual.html
Pine (TUI)
Pine has had some whitespace truncation issues in the past, but theseshould all be fixed now.
Use alpine (pine's successor) if you can.
Config options:- quell-flowed-text is needed for recent versions- the 'no-strip-whitespace-before-send' option is needed
Sylpheed (GUI)
- Works well for inlining text (or using attachments).
- Allows use of an external editor.
- Is slow on large folders.
- Won't do TLS SMTP auth over a non-SSL connection.
- Has a helpful ruler bar in the compose window.
- Adding addresses to address book doesn't understand the display nameproperly.
Thunderbird (GUI)
Thunderbird is an Outlook clone that likes to mangle text, but there are waysto coerce it into behaving.
Allow use of an external editor:The easiest thing to do with Thunderbird and patches is to use an'external editor' extension and then just use your favorite $EDITORfor reading/merging patches into the body text. To do this, downloadand install the extension, then add a button for it usingView->Toolbars->Customize.. and finally just click on it when in theCompose dialog.
Please note that 'external editor' requires that your editor must notfork, or in other words, the editor must not return before closing.You may have to pass additional flags or change the settings of youreditor. Most notably if you are using gvim then you must pass the -foption to gvim by putting '/usr/bin/gvim -f' (if the binary is in/usr/bin) to the text editor field in 'external editor' settings. If youare using some other editor then please read its manual to find out howto do this.
To beat some sense out of the internal editor, do this:
Edit your Thunderbird config settings so that it won't use format=flowed.Go to 'edit->preferences->advanced->config editor' to bring up thethunderbird's registry editor.
Set 'mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed' to 'false'
Set 'mailnews.wraplength' from '72' to '0'
'View' > 'Message Body As' > 'Plain Text'
'View' > 'Character Encoding' > 'Unicode (UTF-8)'
TkRat (GUI)
Works. Use 'Insert file..' or external editor.
Gmail (Web GUI)
Does not work for sending patches.
Gmail web client converts tabs to spaces automatically.
At the same time it wraps lines every 78 chars with CRLF style line breaksalthough tab2space problem can be solved with external editor.
Another problem is that Gmail will base64-encode any message that has anon-ASCII character. That includes things like European names.
You can usually just drag and drop the files generated by git format-patch into your Drafts folder. I know this at least works with the Evolution mail client.