4.1 Pulling

The commands that pull forge data are available from the same popup (magit-pull-popup on F) that is used to pull Git data.

F y     (forge-pull)

This command uses a forge’s API to fetch topics and other information about the current repository and stores the fetched information in the database. It also fetches notifications for all repositories from the same forge host. (Currently this is limitted to Github.) Finally it fetches pull-request references using Git.

After using this command for the first time in a given repository the status buffer for that repository always lists the pull-requests and issues. See Initial Pull.

F Y     (forge-pull-notifications)

This command uses a forge’s API to fetch all notifications from that forge, including but not limited to the notifications for the current repository.

Fetching all notifications fetches associated topics even if you have not started fetching all topics for the respective repositories (using forge-pull), but it does not cause the topics to be listed in the status buffer of such "uninitialized" repositories.

Note how pulling data from a forge’s API works the same way as pulling Git data does; you do it explicitly when you want to see the work done by others.

This is less disruptive, more reliable and easier to understand than if Forge did the pulling by itself at random intervals. It might however mean that you occasionally invoke a command expecting the most recent data to be available and then having to abort to pull first. The same can happen with Git, e.g. you might attempt to merge a branch that you know exists but haven’t actually pulled yet.

M-x forge-pull-pullreq     (forge-pull-pullreq)

This command uses a forge’s API to fetch a single pull-request and stores it in the database.

Normally you wouldn’t want to pull a single pull-request by itself, but due to a bug in the Github API you might sometimes have to do so.

Fetching is implemented under the assumption that the API can be asked to list the things that have changed since we last checked. Unfortunately the APIs are not bug-free, so this is not always the case. Issues such as https://platform.github.community/t/7284 can take years to get addresses (in closed-source software), so I am no longer delaying the initial Forge release because of that. If in doubt, then re-fetch an individual pull-request to ensure it is up-to-date using this command.