How to use forge-discussion functions in external packages

[pkryger]

I'am developing and maintaining a package company-forge - a company backend utilises forge to present user with possible # topics and @ mentions (similar to what Github Web UI does).

Working on adding a support for recently added Github discussions. Amongst other things the company-forge uses forge-discussion-mode to display a help buffer with contents of the discussion and forge-discussion to create some dummy discussion objects for testing. I had a success previously with issues and pull request counterparts by just (require 'forge) in the top of the package file. However, the discussion functions are not brought up to scope unless the forge-github is loaded. This causes issues in my CI while trying to byte compile my package:

In toplevel form:
company-forge.el:644:33: Error: the function ‘forge-discussion-mode’ is not known to be defined.

In toplevel form:
test/company-forge.t.el:1280:41: Error: the function ‘forge-discussion-mode’ is not known to be defined.

(Granted, the compiler didn't figured out yet that it will miss the forge-dissucssion, but I suspect it will do so as soon as the forge-discussion-mode is visible).

Would this be a problem for someone who installs the company-forge package as well (without fully loading forge earlier)?

I wonder what's the recommendation for using the forge-discussion in such a case?

I can see at least these options:

• Require forge-disscussion in the files that need it.
• Create autoloads for functions in use (advantage over above is that, until forge is released with a new version number and the company-forge starts relaying on it the package is installable with older version of forge)
• Ask @tarsius to provide a fix in forge itself.

[tarsius]

Thanks for the report! Addressed in 1a27d24.