Re: Gmail OAuth2 in git send-email

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 3, 2021, 06:08 UTC
Message-ID: <YLhx7nIptHUwXfBD@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <d93a3024-ba8d-3469-2dba-2e0032334232@gmail.com>

Hi,

Bagas Sanjaya wrote:

> We wonder whether git send-email can support Gmail OAuth2 so that we can
> seamlessly send patches without having to choose either action. But however,
> we have to create a GCP project [1] first in order to enable Gmail API. This
> can be overkill for some folks, but unfortunately that's the only way.

Yes, that's how I have mutt and other tools working with my Gmail account set up. See [1] for details.

> If we want to enable support for Gmail OAuth2, should we hands-off API
> configuration to git send-email users, or should we configure it on behalf
> of them? Note that when we go the former approach, some Gmail users simply
> can't afford GCP pricing for whatever reason

I didn't have to pay for GCP in order to set this up; I only had to follow the instructions at https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2 to create a client ID and client secret for oauth access.

Alas, I don't think Git can provide its own client secret to do this out of the box. I could imagine Git providing a way to supply an API key at build time, but distros would need to go through a procedure similar to [2] to make use of it for their own builds. If someone wants to set that up, I think that would make sense as its _own_ separate package --- e.g. a "sendgmail" command that "git send-email" could use via the --sendmail-cmd option. That way, it would be useful for a variety of calling programs and not just Git.

Thanks and hope that helps, Jonathan

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/905551;msg=5 [2] https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/api-keys