Use this to update, install and/or load project data. Usual practice is to provide the path to a directory holding data package tarballs. This function will find the newest version, compare that to the versions in the cache and used in the package and give you the newest version. Alternatively, provide the path to a specific .tar.gz file to install and activate that one.
If a specific version is requested, i.e. a specific .tar.gz file, and this version is already cached, it will be linked and not reinstalled. If for some reason there are multiple hashes with the same version number (usually because a package was rebuilt without incrementing the version), then the latest hash of that version will be linked.
This function now accepts multiple paths, i.e. multiple independent data packages, in the form of a character vector of length >= 1. After deciding which version to install based on the inputs, the function will load all of the data objects into a single environment called deconflicted.data. The problem with loading multiple data packages into the same environment is that there may be name conflicts and objects get overridden. The problem with keeping them in separate environments is that they are difficult to specify and access. Here is how this function deals with these problems:
If
length(path) > 1, the function will require a vector for the argument deconflict_string of the same length. The first element of deconflict_string will be added as a suffix to the data object from the first package in path, etc. For example if the first value of the argument deconflict_string is ".my.project.data", then all objects in the package will be suffixed with .my.project.data.Note that you will have to reference the object correctly in your code using the proper suffix.
Also note that all of the elements of deconflict_string must be unique. But an empty string, i.e. "", is also a valid input which means that all of the names of the data objects from that package will be unchanged. This is helpful if you have a lot of code using one data package but at a later time decide you need to add a different data package. Make the deconflict string
c("", ".my.new.data")and you don't have to change any of your old code.Make sure you include a separator like . or _ but not a space as the first character of each element of deconflict_string.
If only a single package is loaded, there will be no conflicts and by default, deconflict_string is set to "".
As before, all data elements are loaded as promises which means that they are loaded into memory only when called.