Setting up magit forge for gitlab in Doom Emacs

setup-gitlab-for-magit-in-doom-emacs.md

Magit forge for Gitlab in Doom Emacs

This guide assumes you're working on a Unix-like environment. I'm using Linux Mint (Ubuntu). It should work on Macs, and might on Windows.

These are the four steps you can use as a checklist, see the headings below for the details on each step.

• Enable forge support
• Create a Gitlab API key
• Add your gitlab credentials to ~/.authinfo.gpg
• Set-up forge in emacs

Enable forge support

First, enable forge support in doom. Go to ~/.doom.d/init.el, and replace the magit module with (magit +forge).

For clarity, it should look somewhat like this

       lsp
       ;;macos             ; MacOS-specific commands
       (magit +forge)      ; a git porcelain for Emacs
       ;;make              ; run make tasks from Emacs
       ;;pass              ; password manager for nerds

You'll have to run doom sync and restart emacs. In emacs, you can use M-x doom/reload or <SPC h r r>

Create a Gitlab API key

Create a Gitlab API key for the account you'll be using to access your repositories, write this one down. I'm not entirely sure what rights you should give the repo, but I gave it all read rights, and write rights to the repository itself.

Add your gitlab credentials to ~/.authinfo.gpg

Edit or create the file ~/.authinfo.gpg. If it's new, paste the following. Fill in your email address, your gitlab username and your api key where the {{LOUD-BRACKETS}} are.

# -*- epa-file-encrypt-to: ("{{YOUR-EMAIL-ADDRESS}}") -*-
machine gitlab.com/api/v4 login {{YOUR-GITLAB-USERNAME}}^forge password {{YOUR-API-KEY}}

NOTE THE NEWLINE AT THE END, the authinfo format is very sensitive.

Set-up forge in emacs

In emacs, open a magit buffer for a or the repo you want to use forge with. Run the command M-x forge-add-repository. Note, if you have a remote named origin (as is the convention) in this repository, forge will automatically fill in the right info. If you don't, you'll have to type in the remote yourself. IE [email protected]:{{your-user}}/{{your-repo}}

Run forge commands right from Magit

In a Magit buffer, press @ (discover via the popup of popups with ?). This will list all available forge commands. You can now list issues, create issues, and lots more, yay!

I had to add machine {{HOST}}api/v4 login {{USER}}^forge secret {{API_KEY}} to authrc for forge to work with my gitlab instance