Allow PR reviewers to comment on *unchanged* files

[willsmythe]

Allow PR review comments on files not included (unchanged) in a pull request. This is useful when a PR reviewer needs to tell the PR author about a change they may have missed in a file that was not changed in that pull request.

From @mabwah-arista

Please consider allowing it on unmodified files too, not just unmodified lines in modified files. There are situations where a change needs to be made in another file that was overlooked. (e.g. "This file needs to be updated in a similar fashion to file B which you updated.")

This discussion was split out from an existing, related discussion 4452 that focused on commenting on any line of a changed file.

[alexykot]

I have a use case in hand that could be solved by this proposed change.

I have a PR that makes some small changes in a specific area of the codebase. This whole area was added recently, but for unrelated reasons, I've not had an opportunity to review this whole area at all when it was added. And since the current PR has drawn my attention to this - I want to use this opportunity, expand the scope of PR and review the whole newly added area altogether, including files that haven't been changed by this specific PR in hand.

This is similar to a code audit, i.e. situation where a review is needed on a codebase in it's present state, without any changes whatsoever, but I guess it would be much easier to allow commenting on any files within a context of PR than to invent a whole new concept of a code audit outside of PR context.

[frogeyedpeas]

Yea this is a much needed feature. Some codebases can be complex and good reviews might quickly grow in scope from just the changes of the dev to a much larger set if the PR being reviewed touches/interacts with many systems indirectly

[EllipticElysium]

I gree this would be very useful as well, has there been any update on this proposed feature?

[Felix14-v2]

Extremely necessary for translators – when you need to correct mistakes in an already existing translation file, but missed by the author of an already opened PR.

[jordanbtucker]

I have another use case for this. A PR contained changes that caused stale code in another file. I couldn't add a comment on the stale code in my PR review.

[EllipticElysium]

@Twizzle1 that's a perfectly valid use case

[skeptrunedev]

I would also like to have this feature. I frequently find myself needing to do this.

[mmcdonald-bw]

This would be very useful for large codebases in which old code needed to be removed/changed but was not... having to reference a line # and/or link to the code in a comment is very inconvenient.

[dancrossnyc]

Agreed that this would be critically useful. It would be great to see this happen!

[glarsennordic]

Adding my support to this request, for exactly the reason brought up by @jordanbtucker

[metal450]

Really surprised this doesn't exist tbh - I thought I simply didn't know how to find it. But yes, it's extremely common during a PR review to find that a dev missed some related changes elsewhere in the codebase, & it seems currently there's no way to flag those. i.e. maybe they're refactoring references to a particular entity, but missed one of those references. As far as I can tell, there's no way to propose that as a change, in the spot where it actually needs to happen.

[dmoka]

Surprised that this feature does not exist in the most widely used collaboration tool in 2022.

Would love to have it, could help a lot to improve the PR review experiences.

[ewuerger]

Wanted to add a code suggestion that needed certain configuration in a file that wasn't changed. Felt unnatural to not be able to add this during the review but in another comment.

[ranbena]

+1 In a PR I want to indicate that some code should be deleted, but since it wasn't touched, there's no way to do so.

[anurag-bug]

+1

[muescha]

This is the wrong place to ask this kind of questions. Try to ask at stackoverflow

[NicolasBernierHellio]

We're in 2024 and we still need this.

[srini-jb]

Yes , we need this.

[tiga05]

Just did a code review and wanted to add to the review that my colleague also should change line x to y, because z. Then I noticed... Thats not possible?!

[harrier999]

Is there any progress about this feature?
I really need it!

[champion10873]

Yes, really useful and necessary.
Please tell me how I can do this.

[jdmaguire]

Considering they just put Commenting on unchanged lines in a pull request into the wood chipper, I don't think this will get done.

github/roadmap#1014

[carim07]

This would be really useful, to point out directly where extra changes would be needed to address a PR's intended changes

[rachellea]

I would love this feature as well.

[TheHrdlicka]

+1 for this feature. Sometimes context is important, for example when pointing out precedence for some kind of a design or code style choice in a different file, or if there is a similar problem that was solved in an established way, and the PR deviates from it.

[dekimsey]

Another use case of this feature would be for code generator validation. It's a very common mistake for folks to change a source file and then forget to re-generate the outputs and commit them too. Or the reverse and edit a generated file. I would very much like to be able to re-generate the code in CI and suggest a change if there's a diff.

[shaedrich]

I'm not sure but this might be better suited for a separate issue since it requires knowledge of the relationship of the files and such, so this would be more complex to implement

[dekimsey]

Whoops, perhaps I misunderstood the original posts ask. I thought this was requesting the ability to suggest changes for files untouched in the PR. Did I misunderstand?

[dancrossnyc]

It is. I think the earlier comment may have conflated the workflow you described as a motivating example with the request.

[shaedrich]

@dekimsey Yeah, but in general. Your suggestion is very specific. Nothing wrong with that but including it would mean a smaller chance for getting the whole thing initially implemented. Would therefore make more sense as a follow-up, because there's more to consider before starting to implement it

[djmdjm]

I'd really like to see this feature implemented. Often when I'm reviewing code, a change that I suggest will require changes elsewhere in the unaffected portion of the code. It would be good to be able to add review comments there so I can point out what those changes might be.

[mullaryv-ln]

This feature is absolutely required!
There are dozens of use cases, I don't think there's a need to come up with examples.

[schkolne]

Kinda hilarious that gitlab has had this issue open for 6 years and also not addressing it -- https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/24328

I was hoping to use 'GitLab does it" to motivate the folks at GH but I guess not!

[n3ddu8]

+1

[negentropicdev]

I've been harping on NI for their diff tooling not providing enough context when I'm reviewing code I haven't looked at before and need to review more scope than just the code changes.... Looks like GH doesn't support this capability either... (Looking at you, closed issue for being able to comment on unchanged lines that was in the roadmap)

I'm currently reviewing some stuff that was reviewed by others previously and in so needed to pull down additional files and get better context on the smaller changes that were made. In doing so I noticed other fixes that needed to be made but I can't comment on it in the PR! As an new lead developer on a team reviewing team members' changes, I need easier access to more scope around the changes to know the changes themselves are correct and the ability to comment elsewhere in files that were changed and other files.