Is it possible to specify which package source to use as the comparitor?

[ddsjoberg]

Sometimes I have a PR I would like to check rev deps for against the main branch (e.g. a PR with some changes to some fundamental parts of the code base and before merging I want to know for sure if I've overlooked something). Is there a quick way to run rev dep checks comparing the current version of the package on the main (or default) branch against my PR branch?

I think I could do this with no changes in {checked} by creating an R Universe site where I store build from the main branch and set the "repos" to point to R Universe. But wondering if there is another way?

[dgkf-roche]

Ah this is an interesting use case. Yeah, right now just managing it with r-universe is probably the easiest.

Although I don't think it's easy to do right now, another option would be to allow you to specify revdep comparitors given two different paths on your local machine. You'd still need to already have a local copy of the repo in the target branch in a separate folder, but that seems like a pretty actionable solution to me.

If this becomes a common workflow, we can consider helpers that would recognize you're in a git repo, automatically clone/switch to the default branch in a temporary directory and ideally include the git indicators in the CLI output such as writing branch dgkf:feat-delete-all-exports comparing against branch main. If we wanted to be extra clever, we could even use specific git apis for fetching the relevant branches from a PR number, but I'm very reluctant to go down the path of catering to everyone's git service preferences.

This feels like one of those features that will either be surprisingly easy or surprisingly difficult. We'll probably start with the first suggestion and see if the second would be reasonably actionable.

[ddsjoberg]

Thank you for the thoughtful response!