download .tar.gz

[kkmann]

Hi,

I have recently been looking into the problem of computing package quality metrics and the most consistent starting point for doing that seems to be the package .tar.gz.
remotes seems to have almost all the infrastructure I'd need to code up for doing that but at the moment it is geared towards installing packages.

How difficult would it be to add functions for only downloading the .tar.gz from a remote, i.e. download_github, download_cran etc.?
Shouldn't be too difficult for most remotes since you do that as an intermediate step anyway (except for CRAN).

I guess I am suggesting a new generic

download(remote, dest, ...)

where dest would be the destination directory.

I'd be happy to help, but probably would need some guidance. @jimhester Is this within the scope of remotes?

[jimhester]

There is actually already a remote_download() generic, it is just not exported.

remotes/R/install-remote.R

Line 121 in 2557041

remote_download <- function(x, quiet = FALSE) UseMethod("remote_download")

[kkmann]

👍 thanks, how could I miss that x)