using alternate physical footprints on a PCB for the same component (using altium)

Hi,
I am using Altium. I would like to have a microcontroller on a PCB. But, I'm not sure if I want a 20-pin version of the MCU or an 8-pin version. But, I would like to put both footprints on the PCB and hook up the equivalent pins in common between the two footprints. So, this would allow me to populate the 20pin package or the 8-pin package (or lets say I wanted to do this with a 8-pin DFN and an 8-pin SOIC).

Is there an elegant way to do this? That is, I need to have just one symbol on my schematic, and then have two different footprints for the same symbol on the PCB that have the same connections (or a subset). For sure only one of the footprints would be populated at one time.

Or, if there is no way to do the above (elegantly), then I guess I would have to put two symbols in my schematic with some notes. But, is there an elegant way to do that in altium schematic capture. If I take two MCU symbols and hook up all of their common pins to the same nets, I am guessing I'll get lots of compile errors. Is the only way to deal with this just ignore the errors, or is there some tool that makes this easy? In other words, can you tell the schematic tool that one of the components will be DNP, so that it knows the pins of one of the symbols are "passive"?

Thanks in advance!

Can you put 2 symbols in your schematic, one over the top of the other?

Both connected up - with some notes to explain the 2 component names?

yes you can use 'Assembly Variant'
Training videos

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'll go check out Assembly Variants. It sounds like the kind of thing I am looking for.

Thanks!