This action builds an R source package tarball from a git url and collects metadata about the package. It part of the package build workflow that runs for each package update. The action automatically takes care of dependencies.
You can test it locally like this:
docker run -it ghcr.io/r-universe-org/build-source "https://github.com/jeroen/jsonlite"
You can also pass a custom branch/ref and subdir where to find an R package:
docker run -it ghcr.io/r-universe-org/build-source "https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb" "master" "tools/rpkg"