Topics limited to 200?

[glasserc]

Today I was using forge on a repo that we have at work. It's a single large "main" repository with tens of thousands of past PRs and almost a thousand open ones. I wanted to use forge to conveniently set up a local branch from one of the open PRs so I could base my work on that. I tried using b f and typing in the PR number, but it didn't find anything. I spent a little while looking at code and I see that there is a + command which you can use to toggle active/inactive PRs, but in either case only the 200 latest topics are shown. This limit appears to be coming from

forge/lisp/forge-topic.el

Lines 482 to 486 in e8b0682

	(limit :documentation "Number of topics to list at most."
	:initarg :limit
	:initform 200
	:type integer
	:custom natnum)

.

I looked in the documentation but I didn't see anything about this kind of "spec". I was wondering:

• Is it possible to change this limit?
• Does doing so also affect the set of pull requests that are shown in the magit-status buffer? I think I want to keep this number low in order to keep the status buffer responsive.
• More broadly, what's the design philosophy for how I should be using topics? Perhaps I'm reading between the lines too much, but I wonder if this 200 limit is meant to encourage me not to have too many pull requests/topics in my local forge DB. Is the intention that I only keep a few topics locally? Is the idea that "older" topics fade away naturally and we don't need to discuss them any more? I saw Managing a subset of topics locally #734 which kind of touches on this idea but I thought I would try to clarify further

[tarsius]

I looked in the documentation

See Lists and Menus and in particular the subsection Default topic filters.

You can

1. List topics in a separate buffer using RET on one of the topic lists. That not only brings up the list but also the filtering menu, where you can select how many topics should be listed.
2. Or you can bring up the filtering menu right in the status buffer, by placing the cursor on a topic or topic list and typing C-c C-c. You can bring up that menu from anywhere, starting with N.
3. Or you can customize the default via option forge-status-buffer-default-topic-filters.

More generally, experiment with typing RET, C-u RET, C-return and C-c C-c while point is on a topic or a topic list, in the status buffer but also in a topic list buffers. Also q and C-g, while in list buffer and/or while a menu is active. It takes a bit of practice, but these key bindings allow for very fast navigation.

[glasserc]

Thanks, this is super helpful! I had never seen the topics list before -- I think I learned about Forge as mainly an enhancement to the branch-creation options -- and so I read the linked section and it didn't make any sense to me. My thought process was something like "Why would I want to open up a list of topics? I already have a list of topics that I got from doing b f."

I see that I can do the thing I want by opening a list, doing a bunch of filtering, and then moving point to the PR I want and doing b f RET there. I also think I got the design philosophy that I was asking for, so marking this as closed. Thanks!