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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

targets 1.11.2.9006 (development)

Bug fixes

Other changes

targets 1.11.2

  • Documentation fix: if format is "file" and repository is not "local", then the local file is no longer deleted after upload (#1467).
  • Improve legend labels in graphs.
  • Repair mermaid.js graphs with disconnected edges (#1472).

targets 1.11.1

CRAN release: 2025-04-10

  • Bugfix: rstudio_available() returns FALSE without error if rstudioapi is not installed.
  • Add a new "terse" reporter, which is the "balanced" reporter without the progress bar. Make "terse" the default reporter

targets 1.11.0

Deprecated features

  • Deprecate the priority argument of tar_target(). Because of #1458, custom priorities no longer have an effect on execution order. However, up-to-date parallelized pipelines with 100000+ targets can now be checked around 10 times faster, so the tradeoff is worth it. And as a workaround, you can send high-priority targets to one or more special crew controllers in a controller group (details: https://books.ropensci.org/targets/crew.html#heterogeneous-workers).

Changes to default behavior

  • Keep format = "file" files on disk even for non-local repositories (#1467).

Changes to default settings

  • In tar_option_get(), set repository_meta to "local" by default, regardless of repository (#1427).
  • In tar_option_get(), set storage = "worker", retrieval = "auto", and memory = "auto" by default (#1426). For memory, "auto" is now equivalent to "transient" most of the time, but it is equivalent to "persistent" for non-dynamic targets that other targets dynamically branch over. For retrieval, the "auto" setting is new. It is equivalent to "worker" for most cases, but it aligns with "main" for dynamic branches that branch over non-dynamic targets. All this is to avoid re-reading the upstream target from disk every time a branch needs to run.
  • Set the new “balanced” reporter to be the default reporter for tar_make() and tar_outdated().
  • Set the default garbage_collection argument of tar_option_get() to 0 (#1464).

Efficiency improvements

  • Speed up checking up-to-date targets in large dynamic branching pipelines (#1458, #1460). The speedup is over 10-fold or more in some cases.
  • Maintain a persistent text connection when appending to a metadata text file (#1415).
  • Avoid superfluous garbage collection when crew controllers are saturated.
  • Set defaults for storage, retrieval, and memory that balance resource tradeoffs for the most common pipelines (#1426).
  • Garbage collection only runs in targets:::target_run() (#1464). There is no longer a separate gc() call on the main process.
  • Shave off overhead from store_sync_file_meta() in the general case.

Other changes

  • Upload workspaces to the cloud if tar_option_get("repository_meta") is "aws" or "gcp". Download them with tar_workspace_download() and delete them with tar_destroy(destroy = "all") or tar_destroy(destroy = "cloud").
  • Deep-copy settings when resolving format = "auto" (#1425, @paulseamer).
  • Add store_read_path.tar_auto() (#1429, @paulseamer).
  • Improve error message that explains iteration = "group" branching problems.
  • Allow more special characters in recorded warnings and error messages.
  • Call cli::style_reset() at the end of non-silent reporters (#1450, @r2evans).
  • Exclude lists of target definitions from the globals in the dependency graph (#1431).
  • Nomenclature change: drop the term “dynamic file” in favor of “file target”.
  • Internally choose a default level separation in the visNetwork graph based on the number of hierarchical levels and the maximum number of vertices per level (#1432).
  • In tar_visnetwork(), choose the colors of the edges based on the origin vertices, not the destination vertices (#1433).
  • In the "verbose" and "timestamp" reporters, print “dispatched pattern” messages, and print the total computation and storage summed over all the branches.
  • Create a new "balanced" reporter with a cli progress bar (#1442).
  • Deprecate reporters "forecast", "forecast_interactive", "verbose_positives", and "timestamp_positives" (#1442).
  • Ensure colors printed to the console are preserved when forwarded from the callr process (#1442).
  • Add tar_option_with() (https://github.com/ropensci/tarchetypes/issues/215, @noamross).
  • Use prettyunits to print elapsed times and file sizes.
  • Shorten and simplify the tar_make() error message.
  • Minor bugfix: add a new on_worker argument to target_run() and builder_unload_value() so the latter only removes the target value if the target was actually run on a worker.

targets 1.10.1

CRAN release: 2025-01-31

  • Restore explicit references to “self” in R6 classes.
  • Perform crew task retries.
  • Try to handle NA buckets in store_delete_objects.tar_aws() and store_delete_objects.tar_gcp().

targets 1.10.0

CRAN release: 2025-01-13

Invalidating changes

These changes invalidate certain targets in a pipeline and cause them to rerun on the next tar_make().

  • Exclude function signatures from tar_repository_cas() output strings to reduce the size of pipeline metadata (#1390).
  • Exclude function signatures from tar_format() output strings to reduce the size of pipeline metadata (#1390).

Summary of performance gains

tar_make() and tar_outdated() run much faster in this release. Extensive profiling was done on a real-world simulation pipeline with 66002 up-to-date targets. For tar_make() using all the default settings:

Machine Before (seconds) After (seconds) Speedup
M2 Macbook 413.16 35.538 11.62587
RHEL9 450.66 94.08 4.790

And for tar_outdated() using all the default settings

Machine Before (seconds) After (seconds) Speedup
M2 Macbook 91.314 16.636 5.48894
RHEL9 167.809 37.395 4.487472

To take advantage of these speed gains for an existing pipeline, you may have to run tar_make() to convert the time stamps and file sizes to a new format. This initial tar_make() is slow, but subsequent tar_make() calls should be much faster than before the upgrade.

Other/specific changes

  • Speed up tar_make() and tar_outdated() by avoiding excessive buffering and disk writes for metadata and reporters when the pipeline is just skipping targets.
  • Use a more lookup-efficient data structure for tar_runtime$file_info (#1398).
  • Fall back on vector aggregation without names (#1401, @guglicap).
  • Speed up representation of file sizes in metadata (#1408).
  • Add a new "forecast_interactive" reporter to tar_outdated() to choose "forecast" for interactive sessions and "silent" for non-interactive ones.
  • Add a new seconds_reporter_outdated argument to tar_config_set() with a default of 1 to control the time interval of the reporter of tar_outdated() and other passive algorithm functions.
  • Remove target descriptions from the default labels of graph visualizations.

targets 1.9.1

CRAN release: 2024-12-04

Bug fixes

Compatibility

  • Ensure compatibility with igraph >= 2.1.2.

targets 1.9.0

CRAN release: 2024-11-20

Improvements

  • Un-break workflows that use format = "file_fast" (#1339, @koefoeden).
  • Fix deadlock in error = "trim" (#1340, @koefoeden).
  • Remove tailored debugging message (#1341, @koefoeden).
  • Store warnings while writing to storage (#1345, @Aariq).
  • Allow garbage_collection to be a non-negative integer to control the frequency of garbage collection in a performant, convenient, unified way (#1351).
  • Deprecate the garbage_collection argument of tar_make(), tar_make_future(), and tar_make_clusterm() (#1351).
  • Instrument target_run(), target_prepare(), and target_conclude() using autometric.
  • Avoid sending problematic error classes such as "vctrs_error_subscript_oob" to rlang::abort() (#1354, @Jiefei-Wang).
  • Reduce memory consumption by ~23% in large pipelines by avoiding the accumulation of promise objects (#1352).
  • Avoid store_assert_format() and store_convert_object() is storage is "none".
  • Add a list() method to tar_repository_cas() to make it easier and more efficient to specify custom CAS repositories (#1366).
  • Improve speed and reduce memory consumption by avoiding deep copies of inner environments of target definition objects (#1368).
  • Reduce memory consumption by storing buds and branches as lightweight references when memory is "transient" (#1364).
  • Replace the memory class with the new lookup class.
  • Implement memory = "auto" to select transient memory for dynamic branches and persistent memory for other targets (#1371).
  • Omit whole pattern targets from branch subpipelines when possible. Should reduce memory consumption in some cases.
  • Omit whole stem targets from branch subpipelines when retrieval is "main" and only a bud is actually used. The same cannot be done with branches because each branch may need to be (un)marshaled individually.
  • Compress branches into references when retrieval is "worker" and the whole pattern is part of the subpipeline.
  • Avoid duplicated branch aggregation: just send the branches over the network.
  • Back-compatibly switch format = "qs" from qs to qs2 (#1373).
  • Add tar_unblock_process().

Potentially invalidating changes

targets 1.8.0

CRAN release: 2024-10-02

targets 1.7.1

CRAN release: 2024-06-20

  • Use bslib in tar_watch().
  • Speed up target_upstream_edges() and pipeline_upstream_edges() by avoiding data frames until the last minute (17% speedup for certain kinds of large pipelines).
  • Automatically set as_job to FALSE in tar_make() if rstudioapi and/or RStudio is not available.

targets 1.7.0

CRAN release: 2024-04-17

Invalidating changes

  • Use secretbase::siphash13() instead of digest(algo = "xxhash64", serializationVersion = 3) so hashes of in-memory objects no longer depend on serialization version 3 headers (#1244, @shikokuchuo). Unfortunately, pipelines built with earlier versions of targets will need to rerun.

Other improvements

targets 1.6.0

CRAN release: 2024-03-13

targets 1.5.1

CRAN release: 2024-02-15

  • Avoid arrow-related CRAN check NOTE.
  • use_targets() only writes the _targets.R script. The run.sh and run.R scripts are superseded by the as_job argument of tar_make(). Users not using the RStudio IDE can call tar_make() with callr_function = callr::r_bg to run the pipeline as a background process. tar_make_clustermq() and tar_make_future() are superseded in favor tar_make(use_crew = TRUE), so template files are no longer written for the former automatically.

targets 1.5.0

Invalidating changes

Because of the changes below, upgrading to this version of targets will unavoidably invalidate previously built targets in existing pipelines. Your pipeline code should still work, but any targets you ran before will most likely need to rerun after the upgrade.

  • In tar_seed_create(), use secretbase::sha3(x = TARGET_NAME, bits = 32L, convert = NA) to generate target seeds that are more resistant to overlapping RNG streams (#1139, @shikokuchuo). The previous approach used a less rigorous combination of digest::digest(algo = "sha512") and digets::digest2int().

Other improvements

targets 1.4.1

CRAN release: 2024-01-09

  • Print “errored pipeline” when at least one target errors.
  • Bump minimum clustermq version to 0.9.2.
  • Repair the tar_debug_instructions() tips for when commands are long.
  • Do not look for dependencies of primitive functions (#1200, @smwindecker, @joelnitta).

targets 1.4.0

CRAN release: 2023-12-11

Invalidating changes

Because of the changes below, upgrading to this version of targets will unavoidably invalidate previously built targets in existing pipelines. Your pipeline code should still work, but any targets you ran before will most likely need to rerun after the upgrade.

  • Use SHA512 during the creation of target-specific pseudo-random number generator seeds (#1139). This change decreases the risk of overlapping/correlated random number generator streams. See the “RNG overlap” section of the tar_seed_create() help file for details and justification. Unfortunately, this change will invalidate all currently built targets because the seeds will be different. To avoid rerunning your whole pipeline, set cue = tar_cue(seed = FALSE) in tar_target().
  • For cloud storage: instead of the hash of the local file, use the ETag for AWS S3 targets and the MD5 hash for GCP GCS targets (#1172). Sanitize with targets:::digest_chr64() in both cases before storing the result in the metadata.
  • For a cloud target to be truly up to date, the hash in the metadata now needs to match the current object in the bucket, not the version recorded in the metadata (#1172). In other words, targets now tries to ensure that the up-to-date data objects in the cloud are in their newest versions. So if you roll back the metadata to an older version, you will still be able to access historical data versions with e.g. tar_read(), but the pipeline will no longer be up to date.

Other changes to seeds

  • Add a new exported function tar_seed_create() which creates target-specific pseudo-random number generator seeds.
  • Add an “RNG overlap” section in the tar_seed_create() help file to justify and defend how targets and tarchetypes approach pseudo-random numbers.
  • Add function tar_seed_set() which sets a seed and sets all the RNG algorithms to their defaults in the R installation of the user. Each target now uses tar_seed_set() function to set its seed before running its R command (#1139).
  • Deprecate tar_seed() in favor of the new tar_seed_get() function.

Other cloud storage improvements

  • For all cloud targets, check hashes in batched LIST requests instead of individual HEAD requests (#1172). Dramatically speeds up the process of checking if cloud targets are up to date.
  • For AWS S3 targets, tar_delete(), tar_destroy(), and tar_prune() now use efficient batched calls to delete_objects() instead of costly individual calls to delete_object() (#1171).
  • Add a new verbose argument to tar_delete(), tar_destroy(), and tar_prune().
  • Add a new batch_size argument to tar_delete(), tar_destroy(), and tar_prune().
  • Add new arguments page_size and verbose to tar_resources_aws() (#1172).
  • Add a new tar_unversion() function to remove version IDs from the metadata of cloud targets. This makes it easier to interact with just the current version of each target, as opposed to the version ID recorded in the local metadata.

Other improvements

  • Migrate to the changes in clustermq 0.9.0 (@mschubert).
  • In progress statuses, change “started” to “dispatched” and change “built” to “completed” (#1192).
  • Deprecate tar_started() in favor of tar_dispatched() (#1192).
  • Deprecate tar_built() in favor of tar_completed() (#1192).
  • Console messages from reporters say “dispatched” and “completed” instead of “started” and “built” (#1192).
  • The crew scheduling algorithm no longer waits on saturated controllers, and targets that are ready are greedily dispatched to crew even if all workers are busy (#1182, #1192). To appropriately set expectations for users, reporters print “dispatched (pending)” instead of “dispatched” if the task load is backlogged at the moment.
  • In the crew scheduling algorithm, waiting for tasks is now a truly event-driven process and consumes 5-10x less CPU resources (#1183). Only the auto-scaling of workers uses polling (with an inexpensive default polling interval of 0.5 seconds, configurable through seconds_interval in the controller).
  • Simplify stored target tracebacks.
  • Print the traceback on error.

targets 1.3.2

CRAN release: 2023-10-12

  • Try to fix function help files for CRAN.

targets 1.3.1

targets 1.3.0

CRAN release: 2023-09-11

Invalidating changes

Because of these changes, upgrading to this version of targets will unavoidably invalidate previously built targets in existing pipelines. Your pipeline code should still work, but any targets you ran before will most likely need to rerun after the upgrade.

  • In the hash_deps() method of the metadata class, exclude symbols which are not actually dependencies, rather than just giving them empty strings. This change decouples the dependency hash from the hash of the target’s command (#1108).

Cloud metadata

Other changes

  • Fix solution of #1103 so the copy fallback actually runs (@jds485, #1102, #1103).
  • Switch back to tempdir() for #1103.
  • Move path_scratch_dir_network() to file.path(tempdir(), "targets") and make sure tar_destroy("all") and tar_destroy("cloud") delete it.
  • Display tar_mermaid() subgraphs with transparent fills and black borders.
  • Allow database$get_data() to work with list columns.
  • Disallow functions that access the local data store (including metadata) from inside a target while the pipeline is running (#1055, #1063). The only exception to this is local file targets such as tarchetypes literate programming target factories like tar_render() and tar_quarto().
  • In the hash_deps() method of the metadata class, use a new custom sort_chr() function which temporarily sets the LC_COLLATE locale to "C" for sorting. This ensures lexicographic comparisons are consistent across platforms (#1108).
  • In tar_source(), use the file argument and keep.source = TRUE to help with interactive debugging (#1120).
  • Deprecated seconds_interval in tar_config_get(), tar_make(), tar_make_clustermq() and tar_make_future(). Replace it with seconds_meta (to control how often metadata gets saved) and seconds_reporter (to control how often to print messages to the R console) (#1119).
  • Respect seconds_meta and seconds_reporter for writing metadata and console messages even for currently building targets (#1055).
  • Retry all cloud REST API calls with HTTP error codes (429, 500-599) with the exponential backoff algorithm from googleAuthR (#1112).
  • For format = "url", only retry on the HTTP error codes above.
  • Make cloud temp file instances unique in order to avoid file conflicts with the same target.
  • Un-deprecate seconds_interval and seconds_timeout from tar_resources_url(), and implement max_tries arguments in tar_resources_aws() and tar_resources_gcp() (#1127).
  • Use file and keep.source in parse() in callr utils and target Markdown.
  • Automatically convert "file_fast" format to "file" format for cloud targets.
  • In tar_prune() and tar_delete(), do not try to delete pattern targets which have no cloud storage.
  • Add new arguments seconds_timeout, close_connection, s3_force_path_style to tar_resources_aws() to support the analogous arguments in paws.storage::s3() (#1134, @snowpong).

targets 1.2.2

CRAN release: 2023-08-10

  • Fix a documentation issue for CRAN.

targets 1.2.1

targets 1.2.0

CRAN release: 2023-06-26

crew integration

  • Do not assume S3 classes when validating crew controllers.
  • Suggest a crew controller in the _targets.R file from use_targets().
  • Make tar_crew() compatible with crew >= 0.3.0.
  • Rename argument terminate to terminate_controller in tar_make().
  • Add argument use_crew in tar_make() and add an option in tar_config_set() to make it configurable.
  • Write progress data and metadata in target_prepare().

Other improvements

targets 1.1.3

CRAN release: 2023-05-23

  • Decide on nanonext usage in time_seconds_local() at runtime and not installation time. That way, if nanonext is removed after targets is installed, functions in targets still work. Fixes the CRAN issues seen in tarchetypes, jagstargets, and gittargets.

targets 1.1.2

CRAN release: 2023-05-23

  • Remove crew-related startup messages.

targets 1.1.1

  • Pre-compute cli colors and bullets to improve performance in RStudio.
  • Use packageStartupMessage() for package startup messages.

targets 1.1.0

Bug fixes

  • Send targets to the appropriate controller in a controller group when crew is used.

General improvements

  • Call gc() more appropriately when garbage_collection is TRUE in tar_target().
  • Add garbage_collection arguments to tar_make(), tar_make_clustermq(), and tar_make_future() to add optional garbage collection before targets are sent to workers. This is different and independent from the garbage_collection argument of tar_target(). In high-performance computing scenarios, the former controls what happens on the main controlling process, whereas the latter controls what happens on the worker.
  • Add garbage_collection and seconds_interval arguments to tar_make(), tar_make_clustermq(), tar_make_future(), and tar_config_set().
  • Downsize the tar_runtime object.
  • Remove the 100 Kb file size cutoff for determining whether to trust the file timestamp or recompute the hash when checking if a file is up to date (#1062). Instate the "file_fast" format and the trust_object_timestamps option in tar_option_set() as safer alternatives.
  • Consolidate store constructors.
  • Allow crew controller groups (#1065, @mglev1n).
  • Expose more exponential backoff configuration parameters through tar_backoff(). The backoff argument of tar_option_set() now accepts output from tar_backoff(), and supplying a numeric is deprecated.
  • Fix the exponential backoff rules in the crew scheduling algorithm.
  • Implement tar_resources_network() to configure retries and timeouts for internal HTTP/HTTPS requests in specialized targets with format = "url", repository = "aws", and repository = "gcp". Also applies to syncing target files across network file systems in the case of storage = "worker" or format = "file", which previously had a hard-coded seconds_interval = 0.1 and seconds_timeout = 60.
  • Deprecate seconds_interval and seconds_timeout in tar_resources_url() in favor of the new equivalent arguments of tar_resources_network()
  • Safely withhold a target from its crew controller when the controller is saturated (#1074, @mglev1n).
  • Use exponential backoff when appending a target back to the queue in the case of a saturated crew controller.
  • Use native retries in paws.common (@DyfanJones).

Speedups

  • Cache info about all of _targets/objects/ in tar_callr_inner_try() and update the cache as targets are saved to _targets/objects/ to avoid the overhead of repeated calls to file.exists() and file.info() (#1056).
  • Trust the timestamps by default when checking whether files in _targets/objects/ are up to date (#1062). tar_option_set(trust_object_timestamps = FALSE) ignores the timestamps and recomputes the hashes.
  • Write to _targets/meta/meta and _targets/meta/progress in timed batches instead of line by line (#1055).
  • Reporters now print progress messages in timed batches instead of line by line (#1055).
  • The summary and forecast reporters are much faster because they avoid going through data frames.
  • Avoid tempfile() when working with the scratch directory.
  • Use nanonext::mclock() instead of proc.time() when there is no risk of forked processes.
  • Replace withr with slightly faster/leaner base R alternatives.
  • Efficiently catch changes to the working directory instead of overburdening the pipeline with calls to setwd() (#1057).
  • Invoke tar_options methods in the internals instead of tar_option_get().
  • Avoid gsub() in store_init().
  • Avoid repeated calls to meta$get_record() in builder_should_run().
  • Mock the store object when creating a record from a metadata row.
  • Avoid cli::col_none() to reduce the number of ANSI characters printed to the R console.

targets 1.0.0

CRAN release: 2023-04-24

targets is moving to version 1.0.0 because it is significantly more mature than previous versions. Specifically,

  1. tar_make() now integrates with crew, which will significantly improve the way targets does high-performance computing going forward.
  2. All other functionality in targets has stabilized. There is still room for smaller new features, but none as large as crew integration, none that will fundamentally change how the package operates.

Major improvements

  • Support distributed computing through the crew package in tar_make() (#753). crew itself is still in its early stages and currently lacks the launcher plugins to match the clustermq and future backends, but long-term, crew will be the predominant high-performance computing backend.

Minor improvements

targets 0.14.3

CRAN release: 2023-03-08

  • Handle encoding errors while trying to process error and warning messages (#1019, @adrian-quintario).
  • Fix S3 generic/method consistency.

targets 0.14.2

CRAN release: 2023-01-06

  • Forward user-level custom error conditions to the top of the pipeline (#997, @alexverse).
  • Link to the help page of the manual.

targets 0.14.1

CRAN release: 2022-11-29

  • Fix the command inserted for debug mode (#975).
  • Set empty chunk options to ensure Target Markdown compatibility with the special “setup” chunk (#973, @KaiAragaki).
  • Only store the first 50 warnings in the metadata, and cap the text of the warning messages at 2048 characters (#983, @thejokenott).
  • Enhance the tar_destroy() help file (#988, @Sage0614).
  • Implement destroy = "user" in tar_destroy().

targets 0.14.0

CRAN release: 2022-11-01

  • Move #!/bin/sh line to the top of SLURM clustermq template file (#944, #955, @GiuseppeTT).
  • Add new function tar_path_script().
  • Rename tar_store() to tar_path_store() with deprecation.
  • Rename tar_path() to tar_path_target() with deprecation.
  • Add new function tar_path_script_support().
  • Make Target Markdown target scripts dynamically locate their support scripts so the appropriate scripts can be found even when they are generated from one directory and sourced from another (#953, #957, @TylerGrantSmith).
  • Allow user-side control of the seeds at the pipeline level. tar_option_set() now supports a seed argument, and target-specific seeds are determined by tar_option_get("seed") and the target name. tar_option_set(seed = NA) disables seed-setting behavior but forcibly invalidates all the affected targets except when seed is FALSE in the target’s tar_cue() (#882, @sworland-thyme, @joelnitta).
  • Implement a seed argument in tar_cue() to control whether targets update in response to changing or NA seeds (#882, @sworland-thyme, @joelnitta).
  • Reduce the number of per-target AWS/GCP storage API calls. Previously there were 3 API calls per target, including 2 HEAD requests. Now there is just 1 for a typical target (unless dependencies have to be downloaded). Relies on S3 strong read-after-write consistency (#958).
  • Update the tar_github_actions() workflow file to use @v2 (#960, @kulinar).
  • Print helpful hints while debugging a target interactively (#961).
  • Only attempt to debug a target when callr_function is NULL (#961).
  • Make formats "feather", "parquet", "file", and "url" work with error = "null" (#969).
  • Declare formats "keras" and "torch" superseded by tar_format(). Documented in the tar_target() help file.
  • Declare formats "keras" and "torch" incompatible with error = "null". Documented in the tar_target() help file and in a warning thrown by tar_target() via tar_target_raw().
  • Add a convert argument to tar_format() to allow custom store_convert_object() methods (#970).

targets 0.13.5

CRAN release: 2022-09-26

targets 0.13.4

CRAN release: 2022-09-15

targets 0.13.3

Enhancements

  • Print “no targets found” when there are no targets in the pipeline to check or build, or if the names argument of tar_make() does not identify any such targets in the pipeline (#923, @llrs).
  • Ignore .packageName, .__NAMESPACE__., and .__S3MethodsTable__. when importing objects from packages with the imports option of tar_option_set().
  • Import datasets from packages in the imports option of tar_option_set() (#926, @joelnitta).
  • Print target-specific elapsed runtimes in the verbose and timestamp reporters.
  • Improve error messages in functions like tar_read() and tar_load() when the data store is missing.

targets 0.13.2

Bug fixes

  • Do not incorrectly reference feather resources for parquet storage.

Enhancements

  • Simplify and improve error handling.
  • In the command column of tar_manifest() output, separate lines with “” instead of “\n” so the text output is straightforward to work with.
  • Add a drop_missing argument to tar_manifest() to hide/show columns with all NA values.
  • Do not set Parquet version.

targets 0.13.1

CRAN release: 2022-08-05

  • Fix reverse dependency checks.

targets 0.13.0

Bug fixes

  • Do not bootstrap the junction of a stem unless the target is branched over (#858, @dipterix).
  • For non-“file” AWS targets, immediately delete the scratch file after the target is uploaded (#889, @stuvet).

New features

Enhancements

  • Color ordinary targets messages the default theme color, and color warnings and errors red (#856, @gorkang).
  • Automatically supply job names in the scripts generated by use_targets().
  • Inherit resources one-by-one in nested fashion from tar_option_get("resources") (#892). See the revised "Resources" section of the tar_resources() help file for details.

targets 0.12.1

CRAN release: 2022-06-03

New features

Enhancements

  • Use lapply() to source scripts in use_targets(). Avoids defining a global variable for the file.
  • Recursively find scripts to source in the use_targets() _targets.R file.
  • Refactor error printing.

targets 0.12.0

CRAN release: 2022-04-19

Bug fixes

  • Fix tar_mermaid() graph ordering.
  • Hash the node names and quote the label names of tar_mermaid() graphs to avoid JavaScript keywords.
  • Remove superfluous line breaks in the node labels of graph visuals.
  • Fix metadata migration to version >= 0.10.0 (#812, @tjmahr).
  • data.table::fread() with encoding equal to getOption("encoding") if available (#814, @svraka). Only works with UTF-8 and latin1 because that is what data.table supports.
  • Force add files in GitHub Actions workflow job (#815, @tarensanders).

New features

Enhancements

  • Load packages when loading data for downstream targets in the pipeline (#713).
  • Handle edge case when getOption("OutDec") is not "." to prevent time stamps from being corrupted (#433, @jarauh).
  • Added helper function tar_load_everything() to quickly load all targets (#823, @malcolmbarrett)

targets 0.11.0

CRAN release: 2022-03-18

Bug fixes

  • Print out the relevant target names if targets have conflicting names.
  • Catch all the target warnings instead of just reporting the last one.
  • Allow 200 group URL status codes instead of just 200 (#797, @petrbouchal).

New features

Enhancements

  • Allow target name character strings to have attributes (#758, @psanker).
  • Sort metadata rows when the pipeline finishes so that version-controlling the metadata is easier (#766, @jameelalsalam).

Deprecations

  • Deprecate the "aws_*" storage format values in favor of a new repository argument (#803). In other words, tar_target(..., format = "aws_qs") is now tar_target(..., format = "qs", repository = "aws"). And internally, storage classes with multiple inheritance are created dynamically as opposed to having hard-coded source files. All this paves the way to add new cloud storage platforms without combinatorial chaos.

targets 0.10.0

CRAN release: 2022-01-07

Bug fixes

  • Add class "tar_nonexportable" to format = "aws_keras" and format = "aws_torch" stores.
  • Export S3 methods of generic tar_make_interactive_load_target().

New features

  • Allow entirely custom storage formats through tar_target(format = tar_format(...)) (#736).
  • Add a new function tar_call() to return the targets function currently running (from _targets.R or a target).
  • Add a new function tar_active() to tell whether the pipeline is currently running. Detects if it is called from tar_make() or similar function.

Enhancements

  • Add Sys.getenv("TAR_PROJECT") to the output of tar_envvars().
  • Set the store field of tar_runtime prior to sourcing _targets.R so tar_store() works in target scripts.
  • Explicitly export all the environment variables from tar_envvars() to targets run on parallel workers.
  • Allow format = "file" targets to return character(0) (#728, @programLyrique).
  • Automatically remove non-targets from the target list and improve target list error messages (#731, @billdenney).
  • Link to resources on deploying to RStudio Connect (#745, @ian-flores).

targets 0.9.1

targets 0.9.0

CRAN release: 2021-12-04

Highlights

  • Track the version ID of AWS S3-backed targets if the bucket is version-enabled (#711). If you put your targets in AWS and the metadata and code under version control, you can git checkout a different branch of your code and all you targets will stay up to date.
  • Refactor the AWS path format internally. It now consists of arbitrarily extensible key-value pairs so more AWS S3 functionality may be added more seamlessly going forward (#711).
  • Switch the AWS S3 backend to paws (#711).

New features

  • Add a region argument to tar_resources_aws() to allow the user to explicitly declare a region for each AWS S3 buckets (@caewok, #681). Different buckets can now have different regions. This feature required modifying the metadata path for AWS storage formats. Before, the first element of the path was simply the bucket name. Now, it is internally formatted like "bucket=BUCKET:region=REGION", where BUCKET is the user-supplied bucket name and REGION is the user-supplied region name. The new targets is back-compatible with the old metadata format, but if you run the pipeline with targets >= 0.8.1.9000 and then downgrade to targets <= 0.8.1, any AWS targets will break.
  • Add new reporters timestamp_positives" and "verbose_positives" that omit messages for skipped targets (@psanker, #683).
  • Implement tar_assert_file().
  • Implement tar_reprex() for creating easier reproducible examples of pipelines.
  • Implement tar_store() to get the path to the store of the currently running pipeline (#714, @MilesMcBain).
  • Automatically write a _targets/user/ folder to encourage gittargets users to put custom files there for data version control.

Bug fixes

  • Make sure tar_path() uses the current store path of the currently running pipeline instead of tar_config_get("store") (#714, @MilesMcBain).

Enhancements

  • Refactor the automatic .gitignore file inside the data store to allow the metadata to be committed to version control more easily (#685, #711).
  • Document target name requirements in tar_target() and tar_target_raw() (@tjmahr, #679).
  • Catch and relay any the error if a target cannot be checked in target_should_run.tar_builder(). These kinds of errors sometimes come up with AWS storage.
  • Fix the documentation of the reporters.
  • Only write _targets/.gitignore for new data stores so the user can delete the .gitignore file without it mysteriously reappearing (#685).

targets 0.8.1

CRAN release: 2021-10-26

New features

Enhancements

targets 0.8.0

CRAN release: 2021-09-21

Bug fixes

  • Hash the correct files in tar_target(target_name, ..., format = "aws_file"). Previously, _targets/objects/target_name was also hashed if it existed.

New features

  • Implement a new tar_config_unset() function to delete one or more configuration settings from the YAML configuration file.
  • Implement the TAR_CONFIG environment variable to set the default file path of the YAML configuration file with project settings (#622, @yyzeng, @atusy, @nsheff, @wdkrnls). If TAR_CONFIG is not set, the file path is still _targets.yaml.
  • Restructure the YAML configuration file format to handle configuration information for multiple projects (using the config package) and support the TAR_PROJECT environment variable to select the current active project for a given R session. The old single-project format is gracefully deprecated (#622, @yyzeng, @atusy, @nsheff, @wdkrnls).
  • Implement retrieval = "none" and storage = "none" to anticipate loading/saving targets from other languages, e.g. Julia (@MilesMcBain).
  • Add a new tar_definition() function to get the target definition object of the current target while that target is running in a pipeline.
  • If called inside an AWS target, tar_path() now returns the path to the staging file instead of _targets/objects/target_name. This ensures you can still write to tar_path() in storage = "none" targets and the package will automatically hash the right file and upload it to the cloud. (This behavior does not apply to formats "file" and "aws_file", where it is never necessary to set storage = "none".)

Enhancements

  • Use eval(parse(text = ...), envir = tar_option_set("envir") instead of source() in the _targets.R file for Target Markdown.
  • Allow feather and parquet formats to accept objects of class RecordBatch and Table (@MilesMcBain).
  • Let knitr load the Target Markdown engine (#469, @nviets, @yihui). Minimum knitr version is now 1.34.
  • In the tar_resources_future() help file, encourage the use of plan to specify resources.

targets 0.7.0

CRAN release: 2021-08-19

Bug fixes

  • Ensure error = "continue" does not cause errored targets to have NULL values.
  • Relay output and messages in Target Markdown interactive mode (using the R/default knitr engine).

New features

Enhancements

  • Handle future errors within targets (#570, @stuvet).
  • Handle storage errors within targets (#571, @stuvet).
  • In Target Markdown in non-interactive mode, suppress messages if the message knitr chunk option is FALSE (#574, @jmbuhr).
  • In Target Markdown, if tar_interactive is not set, choose interactive vs non-interactive mode based on isTRUE(getOption("knitr.in.progress")) instead of interactive().
  • Convert errors loading dependencies into errors running targets (@stuvet).

targets 0.6.0

CRAN release: 2021-07-21

Bug fixes

  • Allow tar_poll() to lose and then regain connection to the progress file.
  • Make sure changes to the tar_group column of iteration = "group" data frames do not invalidate slices (#507, @lindsayplatt).

New features

  • In Target Markdown, add a new tar_interactive global option to select interactive mode or non-interactive mode (#469).
  • Highlight a graph neighborhood when the user clicks a node. Control the neighborhood degree with new arguments degree_from and degree_to of tar_visnetwork() and tar_glimpse() (#474, @rgayler).
  • Make the target script path configurable in tar_config_set() (#476).
  • Add a tar_script chunk option in Target Markdown to control where the targets language engine writes the target script and helper scripts (#478).
  • Add new arguments script and store to choose custom paths to the target script file and data store for individual function calls (#477).
  • Allow users to set an alternative path to the YAML configuration file for the current R session (#477). Most users have no reason to set this path, it is only for niche applications like Shiny apps with targets backends. Unavoidably, the path gets reset to _targets.yaml when the session restarts.
  • Add new _targets.yaml config options reporter_make, reporter_outdated, and workers to control function argument defaults shared across multiple functions called outside _targets.R (#498, @ianeveperry).
  • Add tar_load_globals() for debugging, testing, prototyping, and teaching (#496, @malcolmbarrett).
  • Add structure to the resources argument of tar_target() to avoid conflicts among formats and HPC backends (#489). Includes user-side helper functions like tar_resources() and tar_resources_aws() to build the required data structures.
  • Log skipped targets in _targets/meta/progress and display then in tar_progress(), tar_poll(), tar_watch(), tar_progress_branches(), tar_progress_summary(), and tar_visnetwork() (#514). Instead of writing each skip line separately to _targets/meta/progress, accumulate skip lines in a queue and then write them all out in bulk when something interesting happens. This avoids a lot of overhead in certain cases.
  • Add a shortcut argument to tar_make(), tar_make_clustermq(), tar_make_future(), tar_outdated(), and tar_sitrep() to more efficiently skip parts of the pipeline (#522, #523, @jennysjaarda, @MilesMcBain, @kendonB).
  • Support names and shortcut in graph data frames and graph visuals (#529).
  • Move allow and exclude to the network behind the graph visuals rather than the visuals themselves (#529).
  • Add a new “progress” display to the tar_watch() app to show verbose progress info and metadata.
  • Add a new workspace_on_error argument of tar_option_set() to supersede error = "workspace". Helps control workspace behavior independently of the error argument of tar_target() (#405, #533, #534, @mattwarkentin, @xinstein).
  • Implement error = "abridge" in tar_target() and related functions. If a target errors out with this option, the target itself stops, any currently running targets keeps, and no new targets launch after that (#533, #534, @xinstein).
  • Add a menu prompt to tar_destroy() which can be suppressed with TAR_ASK = "false" (#542, @gofford).
  • Support functions tar_older() and tar_newer() to help users identify and invalidate targets at regular times or intervals.

Deprecations

  • In Target Markdown, deprecate the targets chunk option in favor of tar_globals (#469).
  • Deprecate error = "workspace" in tar_target() and related functions. Use tar_option_set(workspace_on_error = TRUE) instead (#405, #533, @mattwarkentin, @xinstein).

Performance

  • Reset the backoff upper bound when concluding a target or shutting down a clustermq worker (@rich-payne).
  • Set more aggressive default backoff bound of 0.1 seconds (previous: 5 seconds) and set a more aggressive minimum of 0.001 seconds (previous: 0.01 seconds) (@rich-payne).
  • Speed up the summary and forecast reporters by only printing to the console every quarter second.
  • Avoid superfluous calls to store_sync_file_meta.default() on small files.
  • In tar_watch(), take several measures to avoid long computation times rendering the graph:
    • Expose arguments display and displays to tar_watch() so the user can select which display shows first.
    • Make "summary" the default display instead of "graph".
    • Set outdated to FALSE by default.

Enhancements

  • Simplify the Target Markdown example.
  • Warn about unnamed chunks in Target Markdown.
  • Redesign option system to be more object-oriented and rigorous. Also export most options to HPC workers (#475).
  • Simplify config system to let API function arguments take control (#483).
  • In tar_read() for targets with format = "aws_file", download the file back to the path the user originally saved it when the target ran.
  • Replace the TAR_MAKE_REPORTER environment variable with targets::tar_config_get("reporter_make").
  • Use eval(parse(text = readLines("_targets.R")), envir = some_envir) and related techniques instead of the less controllable source(). Expose an envir argument to many functions for further control over evaluation if callr_function is NULL.
  • Drop out.attrs when hashing groups of data frames to extend #507 to expand.grid() (#508).
  • Increase the number of characters in errors and warnings up to 2048.
  • Refactor assertions to automatically generate better messages.
  • Export assertions, conditions, and language utilities in packages that build on top of targets.
  • Change GITHUBPAT to GITHUB_TOKEN in the tar_github_actions() YAML file (#554, @eveyp).
  • Support the eval chunk option in Target Markdown (#552, @fkohrt).
  • Record time stamps in the metadata time column for all builder targets, regardless of storage format.

targets 0.5.0

Bug fixes

  • Export in-memory config settings from _targets.yaml to parallel workers.

New features

  • Add a limited-scope exclude argument to tar_watch() and tar_watch_server() (#458, @gorkang).
  • Write a .gitignore file to ignore everything in _targets/meta/ except .gitignore and _targets/meta/meta.
  • Target Markdown: add knitr engines for pipeline construction and prototyping from within literate programming documents (#469, @cderv, @nviets, @emilyriederer, @ijlyttle, @GShotwell, @gadenbuie, @tomsing1). Huge thanks to @cderv on this one for answering my deluge of questions, helping me figure out what was and was not possible in knitr, and ultimately circling me back to a successful approach.
  • Add an RStudio R Markdown template for Target Markdown (#469).
  • Implement use_targets(), which writes the Target Markdown template to the project root (#469).
  • Implement tar_unscript() to clean up scripts written by Target Markdown.

Enhancements

  • Enable priorities in tar_make() and tar_manifest().
  • Show the priority in the print method of stem and pattern targets.
  • Throw informative errors if the secondary arguments to pattern = slice() or pattern = sample() are invalid.
  • In tar_target_raw(), assert that commands have length 1 when converted to expressions.
  • Handle errors and post failure artifacts in the Github Actions YAML file.
  • Rewrite the documentation on invalidation rules in tar_cue() (@maelle).
  • Drop dplyr groups and "grouped_df" class in tar_group() (tarchetypes discussion #53, @kendonB).
  • Assign branch names to dynamic branching return values produced by tar_read() and tar_read_raw().

targets 0.4.2

CRAN release: 2021-04-30

Bug fixes

  • Do not use time stamps to monitor the config file (e.g. _targets.yaml). Fixes CRAN check errors from version 0.4.1.

targets 0.4.1

CRAN release: 2021-04-22

  • Fix CRAN test error on Windows R-devel.
  • Do not inherit roxygen2 docstrings from shiny.
  • Handle more missing Suggests: packages.
  • Unset the config lock before reading targets.yaml in the callr process.

targets 0.4.0

Bug fixes

  • Avoid file.rename() errors when migrating staged temporary files (#410).
  • Return correct error messages from feather and parquet formats (#388). Now calling assert_df() from store_assert_format() instead of store_cast_object(). And now those last two functions are not called at all if the target throws an error.
  • Retry writing lines to database files so Windows machines can run tar_poll() at the same time as the pipeline (#393).
  • Rename file written by tar_renv() to _targets_packages.R (#397).
  • Ensure metadata is loaded to compute labels properly when outdated = FALSE in tar_visnetwork().

New features

  • Implement tar_timestamp() and tar_timestamp_raw() to get the last modified timestamp of a target’s data (#378).
  • Implement tar_progress_summary() to compactly summarize all pipeline progress (#380).
  • Add a characters argument of tar_traceback() to cap the traceback line lengths (#383).
  • Add new “summary” and “about” views to tar_watch() (#382).
  • Implement tar_poll() to repeatedly poll runtime progress in the R console (#381). tar_poll() is a lightweight alternative to tar_watch().
  • Change the color of the “dormant” status in the graph.
  • Add a tar_envvar() function to list values of special environment variables supported in targets. The help file explains each environment variable in detail.
  • Support extra project-level configuration settings with _targets.yaml (#297). New functions tar_config_get() and tar_config_set() interact with the _targets.yaml file. Currently only supports the store field to set the data store path to something other than _targets/.

Performance

  • Shut down superfluous persistent workers earlier in dynamic branching and when all remaining targets have deployment = "main" (#398, #399, #404, @pat-s).

Enhancements

  • Attempt to print only the useful part of the traceback in tar_traceback() (#383).
  • Add a line break at the end of the “summary” reporter so warnings do not mangle the output.
  • In tar_watch(), use shinybusy instead of shinycssloaders and keep current output on display while new output is rendering (#386, @rcorty).
  • Right-align the headers and counts in the “summary” and “forecast” reporters.
  • Add a timestamp to the “summary” reporter.
  • Make the reporters show when a target ends (#391, @mattwarkentin).
  • Make the reporters show when a pattern ends if the pattern built at least one target and none of the targets errored or canceled.
  • Use words “start” and “built” in reporters.
  • Use the region of the AWS S3 bucket instead of the local AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment variable (check_region = TRUE; #400, @tomsing1).
  • In tar_meta(), return POSIXct times in the time zone of the calling system (#131).
  • Throw informative error messages when a target’s name or command is missing (#413, @liutiming).
  • Bring back ALTREP in qs::qread() now that qs 0.24.1 requires stringfish >= 1.5.0 (#147, @glep).
  • Relax dynamic branching checks so pattern = slice(...) can take multiple indexes (#406, #419, @djbirke, @alexgphayes)

targets 0.3.1

CRAN release: 2021-03-28

Bug fixes

  • queue$enqueue() is now queue$prepend() and always appends to the front of the queue (#371).

Enhancements

  • Throw a warning if devtools::load_all() or similar is detected inside _targets.R (#374).

CRAN

  • Skip feather and parquet tests on CRAN.

targets 0.3.0

CRAN release: 2021-03-27

Bug fixes

  • Fix the “write target at cursor” RStudio addin and move cursor between the parentheses.

New features

  • Add a backoff option in tar_option_set() to set the maximum upper bound (seconds) for the polling interval (#333).
  • Add a new tar_github_actions() function to write a GitHub Actions workflow file for continuous deployment of data analysis pipelines (#339, @jaredlander).
  • Add a new TAR_MAKE_REPORTER environment variable to globally set the reporter of the tar_make*() functions (#345, @alexpghayes).
  • Support new storage formats “feather”, “parquet”, “aws_feather”, and “aws_parquet” (#355, @riazarbi).

Performance

Enhancements

targets 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2021-02-27

Bug fixes

  • In tar_load(), subset metadata to avoid accidental attempts to load global objects in tidyselect calls.
  • Do not register a pattern as running unless an actual branch is about to start (#304).
  • Use a name spec in vctrs::vec_c() (#320, @joelnitta).

New features

Enhancements

  • Improve error messages of invalid arguments (#298, @brunocarlin). Removes partial argument matching in most cases.
  • By default, locally enable crayon if an only if the calling process is interactive (#302, @ginolhac). Can still be disabled with options(crayon.enabled = FALSE) in _targets.R.
  • Improve error handling and message for format = "url" when the HTTP response status code is not 200 (#303, @petrbouchal).
  • Add more extras packages to tar_renv() (to support tar_watch()).
  • Show informative message instead of error in tar_watch() if _targets.R does not exist.
  • Clear up the documentation of the names argument of tar_load() (#314, @jameelalsalam).
  • Do not override nobody in custom curl handles (#315, @riazarbi).
  • Rename “running” to “started” in the progress metadata. This avoids the implicit claim that targets is somehow actively monitoring each job, e.g. through a connection or heartbeat (#318).
  • Set errormode = "warn" in getVDigest() for files to work around https://github.com/eddelbuettel/digest/issues/49 for network drives on Windows. targets already runs those file checks anyway. (#316, @boshek).
  • If a package fails to load, print the library paths targets tried to load from.

targets 0.1.0

CRAN release: 2021-02-01

Bug fixes

  • tar_test() now skips all tests on Solaris in order to fix the problems shown on the CRAN check page.
  • Enable allow and exclude to work on imports in tar_visnetwork() and tar_glimpse().
  • Put visNetwork legends on right to avoid crowding the graph.

Performance

  • Call force() on subpipeline objects to eliminate high-memory promises in target objects. Allows targets to be deployed to workers much faster when retreival is "main" (#279).

New features

Enhancements

  • Exclude .Random.seed by default in tar_visnetwork().
  • Spelling: “cancelled” changed to “canceled”.
  • Enhance controls and use of space in the tar_watch() app.
  • Centralize internal path management utilities.

Configuration

  • Skip clustermq tests on Solaris.

targets 0.0.2

CRAN release: 2021-01-21

CRAN response

Enhancements

  • Use JOSS paper in CITATION.

targets 0.0.1

Enhancements

targets 0.0.0.9003

Bug fixes

  • Ensure pattern-only pipelines can be defined so they can be combined again later with tar_bind() (#245, @yonicd).
  • Implement safeguards around igraph topological sort.

Enhancements

Breaking changes

  • Make patterns composable (#212, @glep, @djbirke).
  • Allow workspaces to load nonexportable objects (#214).
  • Make workspace files super light by saving only a reference to the required dependencies (#214).
  • Add a new workspaces argument to tar_option_set() to specify which targets will save their workspace files during tar_make() (#214).
  • Change error = "save" to error = "workspace" to so it is clearer that saving workspaces no longer duplicates data (#214).
  • Rename what to destroy in tar_destroy().
  • Remove tar_undebug() because is redundant with tar_destroy(destroy = "workspaces").

New features

Enhancements

targets 0.0.0.9002

Breaking changes

  • Add a new size field to the metadata to allow targets to make better judgments about when to rehash files (#180). We now compare hashes to check file size differences instead of doing messy floating point comparisons with ad hoc tolerances. It breaks back compatibility with old projects, but the error message is informative, and this is all still before the first official release.
  • Change “local” to “main” and “remote” to “worker” in the storage, retrieval, and deployment settings (#183, @mattwarkentin).
  • Ensure function dependencies are sorted before computing the function hash (GitHub commit f15face7d72c15c2d1098da959492bdbfcddb425).
  • Move garbage_collection to a target-level setting, i.e. argument to tar_target() and tar_option_set() (#194). Previously was an argument to the tar_make*() functions.
  • Allow tar_name() and tar_path() to run outside the pipeline with debugging-friendly default return values.

Bug fixes

  • Stop sending target return values over the network when storage is "remote" (#182, @mattwarkentin).
  • Shorten lengths of warnings and error messages to 128 characters (#186, @gorkang).
  • Restrict in-memory metadata to avoid incorrectly recycling deleted targets (#191).
  • Marshal nonexportable dependencies before sending them to workers. Transport data through target$subpipeline rather than target$cache to make that happen (#209, @mattwarkentin).

New features

  • Add a new function tar_bind() to combine pipeline objects.
  • Add tar_seed() to get the random number generator seed of the target currently running.

Enhancements

  • Allow target-specific future::plan()s through the resources argument of tar_target() (#198, @mattwarkentin).
  • Use library() instead of require() in command_load_packages().
  • Evaluate commands directly in targets$cache$targets$envir to improve convenience in interactive debugging (ls() just works now.) This is reasonably safe now that the cache is populated at the last minute and cleared as soon as possible (#209, #210).

targets 0.0.0.9000

  • First version.