git has in-built functionality for sending email. This is useful for sending patches to mailing lists. However, this requires a bit of setup. And I use macOS Monterey on a M1 MBP so I wanted to use my own iCloud email for the same. I wrote this so it may help anyone looking to do the same.

1. Fetch an app-specific password for iCloud mail.

This is a security measure to avoid having to use your master password. Just head over to Apple ID manage page and click on "App-Specific Passwords". Press the plus button and give it some label like "SMTP for git mail". The password will appear.

1. You can do this easily from the terminal using the following commands:

   git config --global sendemail.smtpServer "smtp.mail.me.com"
   git config --global sendemail.smtpServerPort "587"
   git config --global sendemail.smtpEncryption "tls"
   git config --global sendemail.smtpUser "your-email@icloud.com"
   git config --global sendemail.smtpPass "your-app-specific-password"
   

Alternatively, you can just open the global git config (usually ~/.gitconfig) and paste in the sendemail block like this:

[sendemail]

    smtpServer = smtp.mail.me.com
    smtpServerPort = 587
    smtpEncryption = tls
    smtpUser = your-email@icloud.com
    smtpPass = your-app-specific-password

1. Send the email

Now you're all set to send emails. To send the last commit's code, just type:

git send-email --to=recipient@icloud.com HEAD~1

You should get a response that looks like:

OK. Log says:
Server: smtp.mail.me.com
MAIL FROM:<your-email@icloud.com>
RCPT TO:<recipient@icloud.com>
RCPT TO:<your-email@icloud.com>
From: Your Name <your-email@icloud.com>
To: recipient@icloud.com
Cc: Your Name <your-email@icloud.com>
Subject: [PATCH] My Latest Commit
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2022 22:19:16 +0530
Message-Id: <20220224164916.12345-1-your-email@icloud.com>
X-Mailer: git-send-email 2.32.0 (Apple Git-132)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Result: 250

And walla, that's it! You're all set and the email would have been sent.