track.sync: Synchronize the tracking database stored in files on disk to...
In track: Store Objects on Disk Automatically

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Note Author(s) See Also

Synchronize the tracking database to reflect new and/or deleted objects. This function is intended to be called by a task callback so that the tracking database automatically keeps up with new and deleted objects. The appropriate task callback is installed by track.start(..., auto = TRUE). If too much memory is occupied by objects, excess objects are flushed from memory.

This function differs from track.rescan() in that track.rescan() updates R view of the database to agree with changes on disk, while track.sync() is primarily intended to go the other way (to make the disk database agree with R).

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track.sync(pos = 1, master=c("auto", "envir", "files"), envir = as.environment(pos),
           trackingEnv = getTrackingEnv(envir), full = TRUE,
           dryRun = FALSE, taskEnd = FALSE)

`pos`	The search path position of the environment being tracked (default is 1 for the global environment)
`master`	What to treat as the master for the synchronization. For a readonly tracked environment, the default `auto` will default to `"files"` (the only sensible interpretation). Otherwise, must be supplied (to avoid accidents with users mis-remembering the default.) When `master="envir"`, changes are propagated from the R environment to the file system. When `master="files"`, the R environment is made to reflect the file system (differences could result from changes to the R environment, or from changes to the file system, e.g., by another R process changing the database).
`envir`	The environment being tracked. This is an alternate way (to the use of `pos=`) of specifying the environment being tracked, but should be rarely needed.
`trackingEnv`	The environment that contains data for the tracking database.
`full`	If `TRUE`, do a full check, which involves checking that all apparently tracked variables do in fact have an active binding. If `NA`, only do a full check if more than `track.options("autoTrackFullSyncWait")` seconds have passed since the last full check (because this check can be slow when there are many variables in the environment.
`dryRun`	If `TRUE`, no changes are made to either the file system or to the R environment, but changes that would be made are printed out. Note that a change to a file for a tracked variable will not be detect.
`taskEnd`	Should be `TRUE` when called at the end of a top-level command task (i.e., when called by the task callback handler.)

Synchronizing the tracking database with the contents of the environment involves three tasks:

start tracking new untracked variables
for objects that have disappeared from the environment, delete them from the tracking database
check that all apparently tracked variables do in fact have an active binding

Currently, this function will not correctly handle the case where master="files" and where objects are cached and an underlying file is changed.

Returns an invisible list with the following components:

`new`	character vector of names of new variables
`removed`	character vector of names of variables that were removed

The check that all apparently tracked variables have an active binding currently only checks that the variable has an active binding – there is no way (at the R level) to check that the active binding is the correct one.

Tony Plate <tplate@acm.org>

track.rescan for rescanning a tracked database after the files on disk have changed (this is usually only used for tracked environment attached at a position 2 or greater.)

Overview and design of the track package.

track documentation built on May 2, 2019, 10:22 a.m.