tar_render() for files generated in earlier targets

[CharnelMouse]

I currently have a targets workflow that has something like this:

list(
  tar_target(dummy_Rmd, generate_rmd(), format = "file")
  tar_render(new_html, "rmd_file_path")
)

However, running tar_make() returns an error that the file doesn't exist, so tar_render doesn't notice that other targets generate the file. Is there a good way to do this?

The context is that I have an Rmd written by someone else, outside of the targets workflow, and my version of generate_rmd() creates a modified version of it that changes file reads in that Rmd (read.csv etc.) to use tar_read or tar_load instead.

[wlandau]

tar_render() tries to detect existing dependencies in existing reports, which affects the structure of the dependency graph in a way that needs to happen before the pipeline begins, so it’s not a great fit for an Rmd written inside a target. You could write the Rmd before the pipeline begins or above the target list in _targets.R.