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Declare the rules that cue a target.

Source: R/tar_cue.R
tar_cue.Rd

Declare the rules that mark a target as outdated.

Usage

tar_cue(
  mode = c("thorough", "always", "never"),
  command = TRUE,
  depend = TRUE,
  format = TRUE,
  repository = TRUE,
  iteration = TRUE,
  file = TRUE,
  seed = TRUE
)

Arguments

mode

Cue mode. If "thorough", all the cues apply unless individually suppressed. If "always", then the target always runs. If "never", then the target does not run unless the metadata does not exist or the last run errored.

command

Logical, whether to rerun the target if command changed since last time.

depend

Logical, whether to rerun the target if the value of one of the dependencies changed.

format

Logical, whether to rerun the target if the user-specified storage format changed. The storage format is user-specified through tar_target() or tar_option_set().

repository

Logical, whether to rerun the target if the user-specified storage repository changed. The storage repository is user-specified through tar_target() or tar_option_set().

iteration

Logical, whether to rerun the target if the user-specified iteration method changed. The iteration method is user-specified through tar_target() or tar_option_set().

file

Logical, whether to rerun the target if the file(s) with the return value changed or at least one is missing.

seed

Logical, whether to rerun the target if pseudo-random number generator seed either changed or is NA. The reproducible deterministic target-specific seeds are controlled by tar_option_get("seed") and the target names. See tar_option_set() for details.

Target invalidation rules

targets uses internal metadata and special cues to decide whether a target is up to date (can skip) or is outdated/invalidated (needs to rerun). By default, targets moves through the following list of cues and declares a target outdated if at least one is cue activated.

  1. There is no metadata record of the target.

  2. The target errored last run.

  3. The target has a different class than it did before.

  4. The cue mode equals "always".

  5. The cue mode does not equal "never".

  6. The command metadata field (the hash of the R command) is different from last time.

  7. The depend metadata field (the hash of the immediate upstream dependency targets and global objects) is different from last time.

  8. The storage format is different from last time.

  9. The iteration mode is different from last time.

  10. A target's file (either the one in _targets/objects/ or a dynamic file) does not exist or changed since last time.

The user can suppress many of the above cues using the tar_cue() function, which creates the cue argument of tar_target(). Cues objects also constitute more nuanced target invalidation rules. The tarchetypes package has many such examples, including tar_age(), tar_download(), tar_cue_age(), tar_cue_force(), and tar_cue_skip().

Dependency-based invalidation and user-defined functions

If the cue of a target has depend = TRUE (default) then the target is marked invalidated/outdated when its upstream dependencies change. A target's dependencies include upstream targets, user-defined functions, and other global objects populated in the target script file (default: _targets.R). To determine if a given dependency changed since the last run of the pipeline, targets computes hashes. The hash of a target is computed on its files in storage (usually a file in _targets/objects/). The hash of a non-function global object dependency is computed directly on its in-memory data. User-defined functions are hashed in the following way:

  1. Deparse the function with targets:::tar_deparse_safe(). This function computes a string representation of the function body and arguments. This string representation is invariant to changes in comments and whitespace, which means trivial changes to formatting do not cue targets to rerun.

  2. Manually remove any literal pointers from the function string using targets:::mask_pointers(). Such pointers arise from inline compiled C/C++ functions.

  3. Using static code analysis (i.e. tar_deps(), which is based on codetools::findGlobals()) identify any user-defined functions and global objects that the current function depends on. Append the hashes of those dependencies to the string representation of the current function.

  4. Compute the hash of the final string representation using targets:::hash_object().

Above, (3) is important because user-defined functions have dependencies of their own, such as other user-defined functions and other global objects. (3) ensures that a change to a function's dependencies invalidates the function itself, which in turn invalidates any calling functions and any targets downstream with the depend cue turned on.

See also

Other targets: tar_target()

Examples

# The following target will always run when the pipeline runs.
x <- tar_target(x, download_data(), cue = tar_cue(mode = "always"))