Forge User and Developer Manual

Forge allows you to work with Git forges, currently Github and Gitlab, from the comfort of Magit and Emacs.

This manual is for Forge version 0.6.8.

Copyright (C) 2018-2026 Jonas Bernoulli <emacs.forge@jonas.bernoulli.dev>

You can redistribute this document and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction

• 2 Initial Setup

  • 2.1 Setup for Github.com
  • 2.2 Setup for Another Github Instance
  • 2.3 Setup for Gitlab.com
  • 2.4 Setup for Another Gitlab Instance
  • 2.5 Setup a Partially Supported Host

• 3 Initial Pull

• 4 Getting Started

• 5 Lists and Menus

• 6 Visiting Topics

• 7 Creating Topics and Posts

• 8 Editing Topics

• 9 Pulling

• 10 Branching

• 11 Miscellaneous Commands

• 12 Miscellaneous Options

• Appendix A How Forge Detection Works

• Appendix B Supported Forges and Hosts

  • B.1 Supported Forges

    • B.1.1 Github

      • B.1.1.1 Github Caveats
      • B.1.1.2 Github Hosts

    • B.1.2 Gitlab

      • B.1.2.1 Gitlab Caveats
      • B.1.2.2 Gitlab Hosts

  • B.2 Partially Supported Forges

    • B.2.1 Forgejo https://forgejo.org

      • B.2.1.1 Forgejo Hosts

    • B.2.2 Gitea https://gitea.io

    • B.2.3 Gogs https://gogs.io

    • B.2.4 Bitbucket https://bitbucket.org

      • B.2.4.1 Bitbucket Caveats
      • B.2.4.2 Bitbucket Hosts

  • B.3 Supported Semi-Forges

    • B.3.1 Gitweb https://git-scm.com/docs/gitweb

      • B.3.1.1 Gitweb Caveats

    • B.3.2 Cgit https://git.zx2c4.com/cgit/about

      • B.3.2.1 Cgit Caveats
      • B.3.2.2 Cgit Hosts

    • B.3.3 Stgit https://codemadness.org/git/stagit/file/README.html

      • B.3.3.1 Stgit Caveats
      • B.3.3.2 Stgit Hosts

    • B.3.4 Srht https://meta.sr.ht

      • B.3.4.1 Srht Caveats
      • B.3.4.2 Srht Hosts

• Appendix C FAQ

  • C.1 error in process filter: HTTP Error: 502, "Bad gateway"

• Appendix D Keystroke Index

• Appendix E Function and Command Index

• Appendix F Variable Index