Track changes of exported data of packages

[psychelzh]

Currently, tar_option_set(imports = "pkg") does well in tracking changes of functions in a packages, but I do not find it is the same for the exported data of a package. I think there can be some cases when the changes in exported data should be tracked.

[wlandau]

Unfortunately, the environment returned by getNamespace() does not include datasets, which is how targets would handle this. In cases where you do need to track a dataset from a package, you can assign it to a global variable in _targets.R.

library(targets)
 
tar_script({
library(targets)
library(gapminder)
dataset <- gapminder
list(tar_target(data_target, dataset))
})
  
tar_visnetwork()

^{Created on 2021-03-21 by the reprex package (v1.0.0)}

[psychelzh]

Is it okay to call data(gapminder, package = "gapminder") instead? In this way, one can use the original name gapminder to track it.

[wlandau]

You can certainly try it and see if you get the right dependency graph.

[psychelzh]

Okay, have confirmed it also works! Thank you very much!