renv::load(other_project) fails if autoload is disabled

[klmr]

In my environment I have intentionally set options(renv.config.autoloader.enabled = FALSE). In principle this works well.

However, it also breaks renv::load(other_project), because renv:::renv_load_switch(), which is called by renv::load(), sources the other project’s renv/activate.R file, which aborts if auto-loading is disabled.

As a user, this is unexpected: explicitly calling load() is the opposite of auto-loading. I’m wondering whether that’s an oversight (I am guessing that few people disable auto-loading, so that option is probably not as battle-tested) — or whether this is working as intended: in that case, is there a way of explicitly loading/switching to another renv project while keeping auto-loading disabled?

A workaround would be to temporarily unset the renv.config.autoloader.enabled option, but that requires awareness of the semantics.

[kevinushey]

This definitely seems like an oversight; I'll take a look.