tar_pin() [ideas]

[Aariq]

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Description

I'm using the pins package to store a dataset that is at the start of a targets pipeline. It would be great to have a shortcut to have that target invalidate automatically if the pin hash changes. I'm imagining something like:

tar_pin(mydata_raw, board = board_connect(),  name = "ericrscott/mydata")

Which, under the hood, uses pin_read(board = board_connect(), name = "ericrscott/mydata") to read in the data and uses pin_meta(board = board_connect(), name = "ericrscott/setaria_runs")$pin_hash to get a hash to figure out if the target needs to be invalidated.

I guess this would be implemented as a target factory where a target of the pin hash gets created upstream from the pin_read() bit?

[wlandau]

I would be open to a PR for this. In your case, maybe format = "url" and/or tar_download() could help if you can get the direct downloadable URL of the dataset.

When I have used pins in targets pipelines, those pin targets were usually as far as possible downstream, and I trusted the pinboards to stay put. So hashes were not as much of a concern there.