Recommended email client to read/apply git patches? [closed]

Question

I spend a good time of the day reading and applying patches send through git-format-patch/git-send-email and I wonder how I could improve my workflow. Very certainly there are more convenient tools than GMail or Thunderbird for doing that.

My mail comes from an IMAP server, so I am rather flexible with respect to the solution. Text-based or GUI clients are fine, even webmails if they do the job right. Basically I'm looking for a good general-purpose email client that is capable of exporting git patches easily without ruining them. It has to be usable under Linux.

Extra points for:

• GMail-like conversations threading
• Patches highlighting (e.g. green for new lines, red for removed lines, ...)
• Ability to see the patch applied to a given code base (external tools are ok as long as they can be invoked from the client itself).

I have been surprised to not find a similar question since this seems like a rather common use of git and email. Thanks for your suggestions!

Answer 1

There are three pieces to this story:

• Highlighting patch format: For example Thunderbird has a Colored Diffs add-on. Other popular email clients probably have similar add-ons.
• Exporting patches formated with git format-patch: Create a local folder in your Thunderbird or what have you. Copy any email messages to that folder using drag-and-drop or right click contextual menu or whatever suits you. This will download the emails from the IMAP server to your local machine.
• Applying all the patches from the local email folder: Locate the local folder withing your homedir (my Thunderbird stores it in ~/.thunderbird/*.default/Mail/Local Folders/<Folder name>). Apply all the patches from all the locally exported emails in one go using git am. Then it's your normal Git workflow: you examine the result, merge stuff, cherry-pick stuff, throw away stuff, and do everything you already know.