Summary
When reviewing a GitHub pull request, allow viewing the diff of an individual commit (or a selected commit range) within the PR, instead of only the cumulative 3-dot (merge-base, head) view that ships today.
Motivation
The cumulative 3-dot view is the right default, but reviewers frequently want to step through a PR commit-by-commit — especially to follow a large PR's narrative or to re-review just the commits pushed since their last pass. GitHub and GitLab both offer this. It aligns directly with DiffViewer's read-only PR-review purpose.
This is currently an explicit v1 non-goal (see README "Non-goals (v1): No per-commit diffs inside a PR (only the cumulative 3-dot view)").
Competitive context
From a competitive review of PR-review experiences (GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, Gerrit) against DiffViewer. Triaged as a good-fit PR-review enhancement — medium value, moderate effort.
Sketch of scope
- Enumerate the PR's commits (the head ref is already fetched into
refs/diffviewer/pr/N/head).
- UI to pick a single commit or a contiguous range; resolve into the existing two-commit diff machinery.
- Decide interaction with PR auto-refresh (1.9.0): a head force-push changes the commit list — define refresh behavior.
- Recents / window-chrome implications for "PR #N @ commit abc1234".
Out of scope
- Posting review comments / approvals (separate concern).
- Non-github.com hosts (tracked separately).
Filed from a competitive-research session; design + plan to follow before implementation.
Summary
When reviewing a GitHub pull request, allow viewing the diff of an individual commit (or a selected commit range) within the PR, instead of only the cumulative 3-dot
(merge-base, head)view that ships today.Motivation
The cumulative 3-dot view is the right default, but reviewers frequently want to step through a PR commit-by-commit — especially to follow a large PR's narrative or to re-review just the commits pushed since their last pass. GitHub and GitLab both offer this. It aligns directly with DiffViewer's read-only PR-review purpose.
This is currently an explicit v1 non-goal (see README "Non-goals (v1): No per-commit diffs inside a PR (only the cumulative 3-dot view)").
Competitive context
From a competitive review of PR-review experiences (GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, Gerrit) against DiffViewer. Triaged as a good-fit PR-review enhancement — medium value, moderate effort.
Sketch of scope
refs/diffviewer/pr/N/head).Out of scope
Filed from a competitive-research session; design + plan to follow before implementation.