[help] Retrospectively set target status

[barnabasharris]

Help

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Description

I ran a long analysis using targets, with the main target function outputting a series of files to disk and returning the file location. I failed to set the target format to file however, so my understanding is that these files remain untracked and when running tar_progress_branches(target_name) an empty tibble is returned. Given the long run time of the analysis I do not want to repeat it but how can I (retrospectively) inform targets that this target has completed as expected?

[wlandau]

Sorry, there is no way in targets to set the status retroactively. This is by design, for reproducibility. As an alternative, you could use cues (c.f. tar_cue()) to ignore certain statuses until you are ready to rerun the pipeline.

[barnabasharris]

Hi, thank you -- I feared that may be the case and I think I understand the reasoning (someone could retroactively set the outputs of a target even if they don't actually match what would be produced by said target?).