NEWS.md

Version 7.0.0.9000

Bug fixes

• In drake 7.0.0, if you run make() in interactive mode and respond to the menu prompt with an option other than 1 or 2, targets will still build.

New features

• Add a new use_drake() function to write the make.R and _drake.R files from the main example. Does not write other supporting scripts.

Enhancements

• Improve drake_ggraph(): hide node labels by default and render the arrows behind the nodes.
• Print an informative error message when the user supplies a drake plan to the config argument of a function.

Version 7.0.0

Breaking changes

• The enhancements that increase cache access speed also invalidate targets in old projects. Workflows built with drake <= 6.2.1 will need to run from scratch again.
• In drake plans, the command and trigger columns are now lists of language objects instead of character vectors. make() and friends still work if you have character columns, but the default output of drake_plan() has changed to this new format.
• All parallel backends (parallelism argument of make()) except "clustermq" and "future" are removed. A new "loop" backend covers local serial execution.
• A large amount of deprecated functionality is now defunct, including several functions (built(), find_project(), imported(), and parallel_stages(); full list here) and the single-quoted file API.
• Set the default value of lock_envir to TRUE in make() and drake_config(). So make() will automatically quit in error if the act of building a target tries to change upstream dependencies.
• make() no longer returns a value. Users will need to call drake_config() separately to get the old return value of make().
• Require the jobs argument to be of length 1 (make() and drake_config()). To parallelize the imports and other preprocessing steps, use jobs_preprocess, also of length 1.
• Get rid of the "kernels" storr namespace. As a result, drake is faster, but users will no longer be able to load imported functions using loadd() or readd().
• In target(), users must now explicitly name all the arguments except command, e.g. target(f(x), trigger = trigger(condition = TRUE)) instead of target(f(x), trigger(condition = TRUE)).
• Fail right away in bind_plans() when the result has duplicated target names. This makes drake's API more predictable and helps users catch malformed workflows earlier.
• loadd() only loads targets listed in the plan. It no longer loads imports or file hashes.
• The return values of progress(), deps_code(), deps_target(), and predict_workers() are now data frames.
• Change the default value of hover to FALSE in visualization functions. Improves speed.

Bug fixes

• Allow bind_plans() to work with lists of plans (bind_plans(list(plan1, plan2)) was returning NULL in drake 6.2.0 and 6.2.1).
• Ensure that get_cache(path = "non/default/path", search = FALSE) looks for the cache in "non/default/path" instead of getwd().
• Remove strict dependencies on package tibble.
• Pass the correct data structure to ensure_loaded() in meta.R and triggers.R when ensuring the dependencies of the condition and change triggers are loaded.
• Require a config argument to drake_build() and loadd(deps = TRUE).

New features

• Introduce a new experimental domain-specific language for generating large plans (#233). Details here.
• Implement a lock_envir argument to safeguard reproducibility. See this thread for a demonstration of the problem solved by make(lock_envir = TRUE). More discussion: #619, #620.
• The new from_plan() function allows the users to reference custom plan columns from within commands. Changes to values in these columns columns do not invalidate targets.
• Add a menu prompt (ropensci#762) to safeguard against make() pitfalls in interactive mode (ropensci#761). Appears once per session. Disable with options(drake_make_menu = FALSE).
• Add new API functions r_make(), r_outdated(), etc. to run drake functions more reproducibly in a clean session. See the help file of r_make() for details.
• progress() gains a progress argument for filtering results. For example, progress(progress = "failed") will report targets that failed.

Enhancements

• Large speed boost: move away from storr's key mangling in favor of drake's own encoding of file paths and namespaced functions for storr keys.
• Exclude symbols ., .., and .gitignore from being target names (consequence of the above).
• Use only one hash algorithm per drake cache, which the user can set with the hash_algorithm argument of new_cache(), storr::storr_rds(), and various other cache functions. Thus, the concepts of a "short hash algorithm" and "long hash algorithm" are deprecated, and the functions long_hash(), short_hash(), default_long_hash_algo(), default_short_hash_algo(), and available_hash_algos() are deprecated. Caches are still back-compatible with drake > 5.4.0 and <= 6.2.1.
• Allow the magrittr dot symbol to appear in some commands sometimes.
• Deprecate the fetch_cache argument in all functions.
• Remove packages DBI and RSQLite from "Suggests".
• Define a special config$eval <- new.env(parent = config$envir) for storing built targets and evaluating commands in the plan. Now, make() no longer modifies the user's environment. This move is a long-overdue step toward purity.
• Remove dependency on the codetools package.
• Deprecate and remove the session argument of make() and drake_config(). Details: ropensci#623 (comment).
• Deprecate the graph and layout arguments to make() and drake_config(). The change simplifies the internals, and memoization allows us to do this.
• Warn the user if running make() in a subdirectory of the drake project root (determined by the location of the .drake folder in relation to the working directory).
• In the code analysis, explicitly prohibit targets from being dependencies of imported functions.
• Increase options for the verbose argument, including the option to print execution and total build times.
• Separate the building of targets from the processing of imports. Imports are processed with rudimentary staged parallelism (mclapply() or parLapply(), depending on the operating system).
• Ignore the imports when it comes to build times. Functions build_times(), predict_runtime(), etc. focus on only the targets.
• Deprecate many API functions, including plan_analyses(), plan_summaries(), analysis_wildcard(), cache_namespaces(), cache_path(), check_plan(), dataset_wildcard(), drake_meta(), drake_palette(), drake_tip(), recover_cache(), cleaned_namespaces(), target_namespaces(), read_drake_config(), read_drake_graph(), and read_drake_plan().
• Deprecate target() as a user-side function. From now on, it should only be called from within drake_plan().
• drake_envir() now throws an error, not a warning, if called in the incorrect context. Should be called only inside commands in the user's drake plan.
• Replace *expr*() rlang functions with their *quo*() counterparts. We still keep rlang::expr() in the few places where we know the expressions need to be evaluated in config$eval.
• The prework argument to make() and drake_config() can now be an expression (language object) or list of expressions. Character vectors are still acceptable.
• At the end of make(), print messages about triggers etc. only if verbose >= 2L.
• Deprecate and rename in_progress() to running().
• Deprecate and rename knitr_deps() to deps_knitr().
• Deprecate and rename dependency_profile() to deps_profile().
• Deprecate and rename predict_load_balancing() to predict_workers().
• Deprecate this_cache() and defer to get_cache() and storr::storr_rds() for simplicity.
• Change the default value of hover to FALSE in visualization functions. Improves speed. Also a breaking change.
• Deprecate drake_cache_log_file(). We recommend using make() with the cache_log_file argument to create the cache log. This way ensures that the log is always up to date with make() results.

Version 6.2.1

Version 6.2.1 is a hotfix to address the failing automated CRAN checks for 6.2.0. Chiefly, in CRAN's Debian R-devel (2018-12-10) check platform, errors of the form "length > 1 in coercion to logical" occurred when either argument to && or || was not of length 1 (e.g. nzchar(letters) && length(letters)). In addition to fixing these errors, version 6.2.1 also removes a problematic link from the vignette.

Version 6.2.0

New features

• Add a sep argument to gather_by(), reduce_by(), reduce_plan(), evaluate_plan(), expand_plan(), plan_analyses(), and plan_summaries(). Allows the user to set the delimiter for generating new target names.
• Expose a hasty_build argument to make() and drake_config(). Here, the user can set the function that builds targets in "hasty mode" (make(parallelism = "hasty")).
• Add a new drake_envir() function that returns the environment where drake builds targets. Can only be accessed from inside the commands in the workflow plan data frame. The primary use case is to allow users to remove individual targets from memory at predetermined build steps.

Bug fixes

• Ensure compatibility with tibble 2.0.0.
• Stop returning 0s from predict_runtime(targets_only = TRUE) when some targets are outdated and others are not.
• Remove sort(NULL) warnings from create_drake_layout(). (Affects R-3.3.x.)

Enhancements

• Remove strict dependencies on packages evaluate, formatR, fs, future, parallel, R.utils, stats, and stringi.
• Large speed boost: reduce repeated calls to parse() in code_dependencies().
• Large speed boost: change the default value of memory_strategy (previously pruning_strategy) to "speed" (previously "lookahead").
• Compute a special data structure in drake_config() (config$layout) just to store the code analysis results. This is an intermediate structure between the workflow plan data frame and the graph. It will help clean up the internals in future development.
• Improve memoized preprocessing: deparse all the functions in the environment so the memoization does not react so spurious changes in R internals. Related: #345.
• Use the label argument to future() inside make(parallelism = "future"). That way , job names are target names by default if job.name is used correctly in the batchtools template file.
• Remove strict dependencies on packages dplyr, evaluate, fs, future, magrittr, parallel, R.utils, stats, stringi, tidyselect, and withr.
• Remove package rprojroot from "Suggests".
• Deprecate the force argument in all functions except make() and drake_config().
• Change the name of prune_envir() to manage_memory().
• Deprecate and rename the pruning_strategy argument to memory_strategy (make() and drake_config()).
• Print warnings and messages to the console_log_file in real time (#588).
• Use HTML line breaks in vis_drake_graph() hover text to display commands in the drake plan more elegantly.
• Speed up predict_load_balancing() and remove its reliance on internals that will go away in 2019 via #561.
• Remove support for the worker column of config$plan in predict_runtime() and predict_load_balancing(). This functionality will go away in 2019 via #561.
• Change the names of the return value of predict_load_balancing() to time and workers.
• Bring the documentation of predict_runtime() and predict_load_balancing() up to date.
• Deprecate drake_session() and rename to drake_get_session_info().
• Deprecate the timeout argument in the API of make() and drake_config(). A value of timeout can be still passed to these functions without error, but only the elapsed and cpu arguments impose actual timeouts now.

Version 6.1.0

New features

• Add a new map_plan() function to easily create a workflow plan data frame to execute a function call over a grid of arguments.
• Add a new plan_to_code() function to turn drake plans into generic R scripts. New users can use this function to better understand the relationship between plans and code, and unsatisfied customers can use it to disentangle their projects from drake altogether. Similarly, plan_to_notebook() generates an R notebook from a drake plan.
• Add a new drake_debug() function to run a target's command in debug mode. Analogous to drake_build().
• Add a mode argument to trigger() to control how the condition trigger factors into the decision to build or skip a target. See the ?trigger for details.
• Add a new sleep argument to make() and drake_config() to help the master process consume fewer resources during parallel processing.
• Enable the caching argument for the "clustermq" and "clustermq_staged" parallel backends. Now, make(parallelism = "clustermq", caching = "master") will do all the caching with the master process, and make(parallelism = "clustermq", caching = "worker") will do all the caching with the workers. The same is true for parallelism = "clustermq_staged".
• Add a new append argument to gather_plan(), gather_by(), reduce_plan(), and reduce_by(). The append argument control whether the output includes the original plan in addition to the newly generated rows.
• Add new functions load_main_example(), clean_main_example(), and clean_mtcars_example().
• Add a filter argument to gather_by() and reduce_by() in order to restrict what we gather even when append is TRUE.
• Add a hasty mode: make(parallelism = "hasty") skips all of drake's expensive caching and checking. All targets run every single time and you are responsible for saving results to custom output files, but almost all the by-target overhead is gone.

Bug fixes

• Ensure commands in the plan are re-analyzed for dependencies when new imports are added (ropensci#548). Was a bug in version 6.0.0 only.
• Call path.expand() on the file argument to render_drake_graph() and render_sankey_drake_graph(). That way, tildes in file paths no longer interfere with the rendering of static image files. Compensates for https://github.com/wch/webshot.
• Skip tests and examples if the required "Suggests" packages are not installed.
• Stop checking for non-standard columns. Previously, warnings about non-standard columns were incorrectly triggered by evaluate_plan(trace = TRUE) followed by expand_plan(), gather_plan(), reduce_plan(), gather_by(), or reduce_by(). The more relaxed behavior also gives users more options about how to construct and maintain their workflow plan data frames.
• Use checksums in "future" parallelism to make sure files travel over network file systems before proceeding to downstream targets.
• Refactor and clean up checksum code.
• Skip more tests and checks if the optional visNetwork package is not installed.

Enhancements

• Stop earlier in make_targets() if all the targets are already up to date.
• Improve the documentation of the seed argument in make() and drake_config().
• Set the default caching argument of make() and drake_config() to "master" rather than "worker". The default option should be the lower-overhead option for small workflows. Users have the option to make a different set of tradeoffs for larger workflows.
• Allow the condition trigger to evaluate to non-logical values as long as those values can be coerced to logicals.
• Require that the condition trigger evaluate to a vector of length 1.
• Keep non-standard columns in drake_plan_source().
• make(verbose = 4) now prints to the console when a target is stored.
• gather_by() and reduce_by() now gather/reduce everything if no columns are specified.
• Change the default parallelization of the imports. Previously, make(jobs = 4) was equivalent to make(jobs = c(imports = 4, targets = 4)). Now, make(jobs = 4) is equivalent to make(jobs = c(imports = 1, targets = 4)). See issue 553 for details.
• Add a console message for building the priority queue when verbose is at least 2.
• Condense load_mtcars_example().
• Deprecate the hook argument of make() and drake_config().
• In gather_by() and reduce_by(), do not exclude targets with all NA gathering variables.

Version 6.0.0

Breaking changes

• Avoid serialization in digest() wherever possible. This puts old drake projects out of date, but it improves speed.
• Require R version >= 3.3.0 rather than >= 3.2.0. Tests and checks still run fine on 3.3.0, but the required version of the stringi package no longer compiles on 3.2.0.
• Be more discerning in detecting dependencies. In code_dependencies(), restrict the possible global variables to the ones mentioned in the new globals argument (turned off when NULL. In practical workflows, global dependencies are restricted to items in envir and proper targets in the plan. In deps_code(), the globals slot of the output list is now a list of candidate globals, not necessarily actual globals (some may not be targets or variables in envir).

Bug fixes

• In the call to unlink() in clean(), set recursive and force to FALSE. This should prevent the accidental deletion of whole directories.
• Previously, clean() deleted input-only files if no targets from the plan were cached. A patch and a unit test are included in this release.
• loadd(not_a_target) no longer loads every target in the cache.
• Exclude each target from its own dependency metadata in the "deps" igraph vertex attribute (fixes ropensci#503).
• Detect inline code dependencies in knitr_in() file code chunks.
• Remove more calls to sort(NULL) that caused warnings in R 3.3.3.
• Fix a bug on R 3.3.3 where analyze_loadd() was sometimes quitting with "Error: attempt to set an attribute on NULL".
• Do not call digest::digest(file = TRUE) on directories. Instead, set hashes of directories to NA. Users should still not directories as file dependencies.
• If files are declared as dependencies of custom triggers ("condition" and "change") include them in vis_drake_graph(). Previously, these files were missing from the visualization, but actual workflows worked just fine. Ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52121537/trigger-notification-from-report-generation-in-r-drake-package
• Work around mysterious codetools failures in R 3.3 (add a tryCatch() statement in find_globals()).

New features

• Add a proper clustermq-based parallel backend: make(parallelism = "clustermq").
• evaluate_plan(trace = TRUE) now adds a *_from column to show the origins of the evaluated targets. Try evaluate_plan(drake_plan(x = rnorm(n__), y = rexp(n__)), wildcard = "n__", values = 1:2, trace = TRUE).
• Add functions gather_by() and reduce_by(), which gather on custom columns in the plan (or columns generated by evaluate_plan(trace = TRUE)) and append the new targets to the previous plan.
• Expose the template argument of clustermq functions (e.g. Q() and workers()) as an argument of make() and drake_config().
• Add a new code_to_plan() function to turn R scripts and R Markdown reports into workflow plan data frames.
• Add a new drake_plan_source() function, which generates lines of code for a drake_plan() call. This drake_plan() call produces the plan passed to drake_plan_source(). The main purpose is visual inspection (we even have syntax highlighting via prettycode) but users may also save the output to a script file for the sake of reproducibility or simple reference.
• Deprecate deps_targets() in favor of a new deps_target() function (singular) that behaves more like deps_code().

Enhancements

• Smooth the edges in vis_drake_graph() and render_drake_graph().
• Make hover text slightly more readable in in vis_drake_graph() and render_drake_graph().
• Align hover text properly in vis_drake_graph() using the "title" node column.
• Optionally collapse nodes into clusters with vis_drake_graph(collapse = TRUE).
• Improve dependency_profile() show major trigger hashes side-by-side to tell the user if the command, a dependency, an input file, or an output file changed since the last make().
• Choose more appropriate places to check that the txtq package is installed.
• Improve the help files of loadd() and readd(), giving specific usage guidance in prose.
• Memoize all the steps of build_drake_graph() and print to the console the ones that execute.
• Skip some tests if txtq is not installed.

Version 5.4.0

• Overhaul the interface for triggers and add new trigger types ("condition" and "change").
• Offload drake's code examples to this repository and make make drake_example() and drake_examples() download examples from there.
• Optionally show output files in graph visualizations. See the show_output_files argument to vis_drake_graph() and friends.
• Repair output file checksum operations for distributed backends like "clustermq_staged" and "future_lapply".
• Internally refactor the igraph attributes of the dependency graph to allow for smarter dependency/memory management during make().
• Enable vis_drake_graph() and sankey_drake_graph() to save static image files via webshot.
• Deprecate static_drake_graph() and render_static_drake_graph() in favor of drake_ggraph() and render_drake_ggraph().
• Add a columns argument to evaluate_plan() so users can evaluate wildcards in columns other than the command column of plan.
• Name the arguments of target() so users do not have to (explicitly).
• Lay the groundwork for a special pretty print method for workflow plan data frames.

Version 5.3.0

• Allow multiple output files per command.
• Add Sankey diagram visuals: sankey_drake_graph() and render_sankey_drake_graph().
• Add static_drake_graph() and render_static_drake_graph() for ggplot2/ggraph static graph visualizations.
• Add group and clusters arguments to vis_drake_graph(), static_drake_graph(), and drake_graph_info() to optionally condense nodes into clusters.
• Implement a trace argument to evaluate_plan() to optionally add indicator columns to show which targets got expanded/evaluated with which wildcard values.
• Rename the always_rename argument to rename in evaluate_plan().
• Add a rename argument to expand_plan().
• Implement make(parallelism = "clustermq_staged"), a clustermq-based staged parallelism backend (see ropensci#452).
• Implement make(parallelism = "future_lapply_staged"), a future-based staged parallelism backend (see ropensci#450).
• Depend on codetools rather than CodeDepends for finding global variables.
• Detect loadd() and readd() dependencies in knitr reports referenced with knitr_in() inside imported functions. Previously, this feature was only available in explicit knitr_in() calls in commands.
• Skip more tests on CRAN. White-list tests instead of blacklisting them in order to try to keep check time under the official 10-minute cap.
• Disallow wildcard names to grep-match other wildcard names or any replacement values. This will prevent careless mistakes and confusion when generating drake_plan()s.
• Prevent persistent workers from hanging when a target fails.
• Move the example template files here.
• Deprecate drake_batchtools_tmpl_file() in favor of drake_hpc_template_file() and drake_hpc_template_files().
• Add a garbage_collection argument to make(). If TRUE, gc() is called after every new build of a target.
• Remove redundant calls to sanitize_plan() in make().
• Change tracked() to accept only a drake_config() object as an argument. Yes, it is technically a breaking change, but it is only a small break, and it is the correct API choice.
• Move visualization and hpc package dependencies to "Suggests:" rather than "Imports:" in the DESCRIPTION file.
• Allow processing of codeless knitr reports without warnings.

Version 5.2.1

• Skip several long-running and low-priority tests on CRAN.

Version 5.2.0

• Sequester staged parallelism in backends "mclapply_staged" and "parLapply_staged". For the other lapply-like backends, drake uses persistent workers and a master process. In the case of "future_lapply" parallelism, the master process is a separate background process called by Rscript.
• Remove the appearance of staged parallelism from single-job make()'s. (Previously, there were "check" messages and a call to staged_parallelism().)
• Remove some remnants of staged parallelism internals.
• Allow different parallel backends for imports vs targets. For example, make(parallelism = c(imports = "mclapply_staged", targets = "mclapply").
• Fix a bug in environment pruning. Previously, dependencies of downstream targets were being dropped from memory in make(jobs = 1). Now, they are kept in memory until no downstream target needs them (for make(jobs = 1)).
• Improve predict_runtime(). It is a more sensible way to go about predicting runtimes with multiple jobs. Likely to be more accurate.
• Calls to make() no longer leave targets in the user's environment.
• Attempt to fix a Solaris CRAN check error. The test at https://github.com/ropensci/drake/blob/b4dbddb840d2549621b76bcaa46c344b0fd2eccc/tests/testthat/test-edge-cases.R#L3 was previously failing on CRAN's Solaris machine (R 3.5.0). In the test, one of the threads deliberately quits in error, and the R/Solaris installation did not handle this properly. The test should work now because it no longer uses any parallelism.
• Deprecate the imports_only argument to make() and drake_config() in favor of skip_targets.
• Deprecate migrate_drake_project().
• Deprecate max_useful_jobs().
• For non-distributed parallel backends, stop waiting for all the imports to finish before the targets begin.
• Add an upstream_only argument to failed() so users can list failed targets that do not have any failed dependencies. Naturally accompanies make(keep_going = TRUE).
• Add an RStudio R Markdown template compatible with https://krlmlr.github.io/drake-pitch/.
• Remove plyr as a dependency.
• Handle duplicated targets better in drake_plan() and bind_plans().
• Add a true function target() to help create drake plans with custom columns.
• In drake_gc(), clean out disruptive files in storrs with mangled keys (re: ropensci#198).
• Move all the vignettes to the up and coming user manual: https://ropenscilabs.github.io/drake-manual/
• Rename the "basic example" to the "mtcars example".
• Deprecate load_basic_example() in favor of load_mtcars_example().
• Refocus the README.md file on the main example rather than the mtcars example.
• Use a README.Rmd file to generate README.md.
• Add function deps_targets().
• Deprecate function deps() in favor of deps_code()
• Add a pruning_strategy argument to make() and drake_config() so the user can decide how drake keeps non-import dependencies in memory when it builds a target.
• Add optional custom (experimental) "workers" and "priorities" columns to the drake plans to help users customize scheduling.
• Add a makefile_path argument to make() and drake_config() to avoid potential conflicts between user-side custom Makefiles and the one written by make(parallelism = "Makefile").
• Document batch mode for long workflows in the HPC guide.
• Add a console argument to make() and drake_config() so users can redirect console output to a file.
• Make it easier for the user to find out where a target in the cache came from: show_source(), readd(show_source = TRUE), loadd(show_source = TRUE).

Version 5.1.2

• In R 3.5.0, the !! operator from tidyeval and rlang is parsed differently than in R <= 3.4.4. This change broke one of the tests in tests/testthat/tidy-eval.R The main purpose of drake's 5.1.2 release is to fix the broken test.
• Fix an elusive R CMD check error from building the pdf manual with LaTeX.
• In drake_plan(), allow users to customize target-level columns using target() inside the commands.
• Add a new bind_plans() function to concatenate the rows of drake plans and then sanitize the aggregate plan.
• Add an optional session argument to tell make() to build targets in a separate, isolated master R session. For example, make(session = callr::r_vanilla).

Version 5.1.0

• Add a reduce_plan() function to do pairwise reductions on collections of targets.
• Forcibly exclude the dot (.) from being a dependency of any target or import. This enforces more consistent behavior in the face of the current static code analysis functionality, which sometimes detects . and sometimes does not.
• Use ignore() to optionally ignore pieces of workflow plan commands and/or imported functions. Use ignore(some_code) to
  1. Force drake to not track dependencies in some_code, and
  2. Ignore any changes in some_code when it comes to deciding which target are out of date.
• Force drake to only look for imports in environments inheriting from envir in make() (plus explicitly namespaced functions).
• Force loadd() to ignore foreign imports (imports not explicitly found in envir when make() last imported them).
• Reduce default verbosity. Only targets are printed out by default. Verbosity levels are integers ranging from 0 through 4.
• Change loadd() so that only targets (not imports) are loaded if the ... and list arguments are empty.
• Add check to drake_plan() to check for duplicate targets
• Add a .gitignore file containing "*" to the default .drake/ cache folder every time new_cache() is called. This means the cache will not be automatically committed to git. Users need to remove .gitignore file to allow unforced commits, and then subsequent make()s on the same cache will respect the user's wishes and not add another .gitignore. this only works for the default cache. Not supported for manual storrs.
• Add a new experimental "future" backend with a manual scheduler.
• Implement dplyr-style tidyselect functionality in loadd(), clean(), and build_times(). For build_times(), there is an API change: for tidyselect to work, we needed to insert a new ... argument as the first argument of build_times().
• Deprecate the single-quoting API for files. Users should now use formal API functions in their commands:
  • file_in() for file inputs to commands or imported functions (for imported functions, the input file needs to be an imported file, not a target).
  • file_out() for output file targets (ignored if used in imported functions).
  • knitr_in() for knitr/rmarkdown reports. This tells drake to look inside the source file for target dependencies in code chunks (explicitly referenced with loadd() and readd()). Treated as a file_in() if used in imported functions.
• Change drake_plan() so that it automatically fills in any target names that the user does not supply. Also, any file_out()s become the target names automatically (double-quoted internally).
• Make read_drake_plan() (rather than an empty drake_plan()) the default plan argument in all functions that accept a plan.
• Add support for active bindings: loadd(..., lazy = "bind"). That way, when you have a target loaded in one R session and hit make() in another R session, the target in your first session will automatically update.
• Use tibbles for workflow plan data frames and the output of dataframes_graph().
• Return warnings, errors, and other context of each build, all wrapped up with the usual metadata. diagnose() will take on the role of returning this metadata.
• Deprecate the read_drake_meta() function in favor of diagnose().
• Add a new expose_imports() function to optionally force drake detect deeply nested functions inside specific packages.
• Move the "quickstart.Rmd" vignette to "example-basic.Rmd". The so-called "quickstart" didn't end up being very quick, and it was all about the basic example anyway.
• Move drake_build() to be an exclusively user-side function.
• Add a replace argument to loadd() so that objects already in the user's environment need not be replaced.
• When the graph cyclic, print out all the cycles.
• Prune self-referential loops (and duplicate edges) from the workflow graph. That way, recursive functions are allowed.
• Add a seed argument to make(), drake_config(), and load_basic_example(). Also hard-code a default seed of 0. That way, the pseudo-randomness in projects should be reproducible across R sessions.
• Cache the pseudo-random seed at the time the project is created and use that seed to build targets until the cache is destroyed.
• Add a new drake_read_seed() function to read the seed from the cache. Its examples illustrate what drake is doing to try to ensure reproducible random numbers.
• Evaluate the quasiquotation operator !! for the ... argument to drake_plan(). Suppress this behavior using tidy_evaluation = FALSE or by passing in commands passed through the list argument.
• Preprocess workflow plan commands with rlang::expr() before evaluating them. That means you can use the quasiquotation operator !! in your commands, and make() will evaluate them according to the tidy evaluation paradigm.
• Restructure drake_example("basic"), drake_example("gsp"), and drake_example("packages") to demonstrate how to set up the files for serious drake projects. More guidance was needed in light of this issue.
• Improve the examples of drake_plan() in the help file (?drake_plan).

Version 5.0.0

• Transfer drake to rOpenSci: https://github.com/ropensci/drake
• Several functions now require an explicit config argument, which you can get from drake_config() or make(). Examples:
  • outdated()
  • missed()
  • rate_limiting_times()
  • predict_runtime()
  • vis_drake_graph()
  • dataframes_graph()
• Always process all the imports before building any targets. This is part of the solution to #168: if imports and targets are processed together, the full power of parallelism is taken away from the targets. Also, the way parallelism happens is now consistent for all parallel backends.
• Major speed improvement: dispense with internal inventories and rely on cache$exists() instead.
• Let the user define a trigger for each target to customize when make() decides to build targets.
• Document triggers and other debugging/testing tools in the new "debug" vignette.
• Restructure the internals of the storr cache in a way that is not back-compatible with projects from versions 4.4.0 and earlier. The main change is to make more intelligent use of storr namespaces, improving efficiency (both time and storage) and opening up possibilities for new features. If you attempt to run drake >= 5.0.0 on a project from drake <= 4.0.0, drake will stop you before any damage to the cache is done, and you will be instructed how to migrate your project to the new drake.
• Use formatR::tidy_source() instead of parse() in tidy_command() (originally tidy() in R/dependencies.R). Previously, drake was having problems with an edge case: as a command, the literal string "A" was interpreted as the symbol A after tidying. With tidy_source(), literal quoted strings stay literal quoted strings in commands. This may put some targets out of date in old projects, yet another loss of back compatibility in version 5.0.0.
• Speed up clean() by refactoring the cache inventory and using light parallelism.
• Implement rescue_cache(), exposed to the user and used in clean(). This function removes dangling orphaned files in the cache so that a broken cache can be cleaned and used in the usual ways once more.
• Change the default cpu and elapsed arguments of make() to NULL. This solves an elusive bug in how drake imposes timeouts.
• Allow users to set target-level timeouts (overall, cpu, and elapsed) with columns in the workflow plan data frame.
• Document timeouts and retries in the new "debug" vignette.
• Add a new graph argument to functions make(), outdated(), and missed().
• Export a new prune_graph() function for igraph objects.
• Delete long-deprecated functions prune() and status().
• Deprecate and rename functions:
  • analyses() => plan_analyses()
  • as_file() => as_drake_filename()
  • backend() => future::plan()
  • build_graph() => build_drake_graph()
  • check() => check_plan()
  • config() => drake_config()
  • evaluate() => evaluate_plan()
  • example_drake() => drake_example()
  • examples_drake() => drake_examples()
  • expand() => expand_plan()
  • gather() => gather_plan()
  • plan(), workflow(), workplan() => drake_plan()
  • plot_graph() => vis_drake_graph()
  • read_config() => read_drake_config()
  • read_graph() => read_drake_graph()
  • read_plan() => read_drake_plan()
  • render_graph() => render_drake_graph()
  • session() => drake_session()
  • summaries() => plan_summaries()
• Disallow output and code as names in the workflow plan data frame. Use target and command instead. This naming switch has been formally deprecated for several months prior.
• Deprecate the ..analysis.. and ..dataset.. wildcards in favor of analysis__ and dataset__, respectively. The new wildcards are stylistically better an pass linting checks.
• Add new functions drake_quotes(), drake_unquote(), and drake_strings() to remove the silly dependence on the eply package.
• Add a skip_safety_checks flag to make() and drake_config(). Increases speed.
• In sanitize_plan(), remove rows with blank targets "".
• Add a purge argument to clean() to optionally remove all target-level information.
• Add a namespace argument to cached() so users can inspect individual storr namespaces.
• Change verbose to numeric: 0 = print nothing, 1 = print progress on imports only, 2 = print everything.
• Add a new next_stage() function to report the targets to be made in the next parallelizable stage.
• Add a new session_info argument to make(). Apparently, sessionInfo() is a bottleneck for small make()s, so there is now an option to suppress it. This is mostly for the sake of speeding up unit tests.
• Add a new log_progress argument to make() to suppress progress logging. This increases storage efficiency and speeds some projects up a tiny bit.
• Add an optional namespace argument to loadd() and readd(). You can now load and read from non-default storr namespaces.
• Add drake_cache_log(), drake_cache_log_file(), and make(..., cache_log_file = TRUE) as options to track changes to targets/imports in the drake cache.
• Detect knitr code chunk dependencies in response to commands with rmarkdown::render(), not just knit().
• Add a new general best practices vignette to clear up misconceptions about how to use drake properly.

Version 4.4.0

• Extend plot_graph() to display subcomponents. Check out arguments from, mode, order, and subset. The graph visualization vignette has demonstrations.
• Add "future_lapply" parallelism: parallel backends supported by the future and future.batchtools packages. See ?backend for examples and the parallelism vignette for an introductory tutorial. More advanced instruction can be found in the future and future.batchtools packages themselves.
• Cache diagnostic information of targets that fail and retrieve diagnostic info with diagnose().
• Add an optional hook argument to make() to wrap around build(). That way, users can more easily control the side effects of distributed jobs. For example, to redirect error messages to a file in make(..., parallelism = "Makefile", jobs = 2, hook = my_hook), my_hook should be something like function(code){withr::with_message_sink("messages.txt", code)}.
• Remove console logging for "parLapply" parallelism. drake was previously using the outfile argument for PSOCK clusters to generate output that could not be caught by capture.output(). It was a hack that should have been removed before.
• Remove console logging for "parLapply" parallelism. drake was previously using the outfile argument for PSOCK clusters to generate output that could not be caught by capture.output(). It was a hack that should have been removed before.
• If 'verbose' is 'TRUE' and all targets are already up to date (nothing to build), then make() and outdated() print "All targets are already up to date" to the console.
• Add new examples in 'inst/examples', most of them demonstrating how to use the "future_lapply" backends.
• New support for timeouts and retries when it comes to building targets.
• Failed targets are now recorded during the build process. You can see them in plot_graph() and progress(). Also see the new failed() function, which is similar to in_progress().
• Speed up the overhead of parLapply parallelism. The downside to this fix is that drake has to be properly installed. It should not be loaded with devtools::load_all(). The speedup comes from lightening the first clusterExport() call in run_parLapply(). Previously, we exported every single individual drake function to all the workers, which created a bottleneck. Now, we just load drake itself in each of the workers, which works because build() and do_prework() are exported.
• Change default value of overwrite to FALSE in load_basic_example().
• Warn when overwriting an existing report.Rmd in load_basic_example().
• Tell the user the location of the cache using a console message. Happens on every call to get_cache(..., verbose = TRUE).
• Increase efficiency of internal preprocessing via lightly_parallelize() and lightly_parallelize_atomic(). Now, processing happens faster, and only over the unique values of a vector.
• Add a new make_with_config() function to do the work of make() on an existing internal configuration list from drake_config().
• Add a new function drake_batchtools_tmpl_file() to write a batchtools template file from one of the examples (drake_example()), if one exists.

Version 4.3.0: 2017-10-17

Version 4.3.0 has:

• Reproducible random numbers
• Automatic detection of knitr dependencies
• More vignettes
• Bug fixes

Version 4.2.0: 2017-09-29

Version 4.2.0 will be released today. There are several improvements to code style and performance. In addition, there are new features such as cache/hash externalization and runtime prediction. See the new storage and timing vignettes for details. This release has automated checks for back-compatibility with existing projects, and I also did manual back compatibility checks on serious projects.

Version 3.0.0: 2017-05-03

Version 3.0.0 is coming out. It manages environments more intelligently so that the behavior of make() is more consistent with evaluating your code in an interactive session.

Version 1.0.1: 2017-02-28

Version 1.0.1 is on CRAN! I'm already working on a massive update, though. 2.0.0 is cleaner and more powerful.