Change target names without invalidation?

[joelnitta]

Sorry if this is already documented somewhere and I've missed it.

Is there a way to change a target's name without invalidating the target? In other words, I want to change some names of previously built targets in the plan, but not actually cause the steps to run again since some of them are time consuming.

[wlandau]

I tried this in drake, but it did not go well. The main problem was reverse dependencies: if you rename a target, the downstream targets that depend on it need to update their commands, which invalidates those targets. So I do not think it is feasible. The other challenge was changing the name without changing the RNG seed, which turned out to be awkward because default target seeds in drake are automatically computed from target names. In targets, there is no way to set the seed independently from the target name, and so far I do not think the reasons in favor of such a feature are compelling enough.

[shirdekel]

Does this mean that it's not possible to transfer a drake target to targets if it has a specified seed (through the seed argument of target())?

[wlandau]

Seeds are a different issue than migrating from drake to targets. There is no automated way to transfer a drake target to a targets target in the general case. drake is stable enough that I have generally tried not to nudge folks to refactor existing drake projects unless they are struggling with a clear known drake limitation that targets solves.

[shirdekel]

Fair enough, thanks.

[joelnitta]

I see, thanks for the explanation (I thought I remembered reading about this somewhere before... must have been drake). As the famous quote goes, naming things is hard.