SpaDES.core

Provides the core framework for a discrete event system to implement a complete data-to-decisions, reproducible workflow. The core components facilitate the development of modular pieces, and enable the user to include additional functionality by running user-built modules. Includes conditional scheduling, restart after interruption, packaging of reusable modules, tools for developing arbitrary automated workflows, automated interweaving of modules of different temporal resolution, and tools for visualizing and understanding the within-project dependencies.

Releases

31

Needs compilation

No

Needs R

>= 4.3

Config/roxygen2/version

8.1.0

Date

2026-08-29

Language

en-CA

• Stochastic block models

Since March 2026

• cli
• codetools
• data.table
• fs
• igraph
• lobstr
• methods
• qs2
• quickPlot
• reproducible
• Require
• rlang
• stats
• terra
• tools
• utils
• whisker

Installing it adds

43 packages, 39.2 MB of source

Of those, need compilation

23

• archive
• CircStats
• covr
• DBI
• DiagrammeR
• future
• future.callr
• ggplot2
• ggplotify
• gitcreds
• googledrive
• httr
• httr2
• knitr
• lattice
• lme4
• logging
• magrittr
• pkgload
• png
• raster
• RColorBrewer
• rmarkdown
• roxygen2
• rprojroot
• RSQLite
• rstudioapi
• sp
• SpaDES.tools
• tcltk
• testthat
• withr
• xml2
• xmlparsedata

Lines by kind (53,828)

Lines by language

Languages are counted from file extensions.

Files

371

R functions

406

Object systems

S3: 16 methods, S4: 5 classes, S4: 148 generics, S4: 187 methods

Deprecated functions

9

Median

3

Mean

4.91

Highest

114

Median lines per function

15

R functions

406

Calls

450

Unconnected

96

Groups

16

Lines counted

10,964

Lines the tests ran

469

Tests passed

No

Measured with

covr 3.6.5 on R 4.6.1

Has tests

Yes

Test frameworks

RUnit, testthat

Test cases

510

Lines of tests

14,359

Test lines per line of code

0.52

• 01 Introduction to `SpaDES`
• 02 Building `SpaDES` modules
• 03 Caching `SpaDES` simulations
• 04 Advanced `SpaDES` use
• 05 Automated module testing

README

Yes, 138 words

Release notes file

Yes

Help pages

176

Lines of documentation

10,263

• Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of Natural Resources Canada

Commits

4,348

Open pull requests

2

Tagged releases

28

Latest tagged release

v2.1.8, 18 Sep 2025

Issues closed in

84 days (median)

Pull requests closed in

0 days (median)

Pull requests merged

90%

Created

28 Jun 2017

Licence file reads as

GPL-3.0

Method, repository practices

Across PredictiveEcology

New features

• Cached file-backed objects (e.g. terra SpatRaster) are now portable across machines and user accounts. Backing files are recorded relative to the simulation's paths instead of as absolute locations, so a cache written on one machine can be reused on another. If you set reproducible.fileBackedAnchors yourself, your setting is respected.
• If setting up a simulation fails partway through, you no longer have to start over. Fix the module that failed, then call restartSimInit() to pick up where it left off. On by default. See ?restartSimInit.
• SpaDES.core now records every file and URL that modules download during a simulation, tagged with the module and event that asked for it, so you can see where a simulation's inputs came from. Turn it off with options(spades.urlLog = FALSE). See ?spadesOptions.
• New findProjectPath() finds a project's root directory by looking for an RStudio project file or a git repository. See ?findProjectPath.
• New codeCheckModules() checks several modules in one call, or every module in your module folder when called with no arguments. See ?codeCheckModule.
• You can now tell the module code checker to ignore a finding: add a # nolint comment to a line of module code, or set options(spades.codeChecksIgnore = ...). Use # nolint: vars a, b to declare objects the checker cannot see being created. See ?codeCheckModule.
• The code checker gained checks on a module's reqdPkgs: packages listed more than once, and package::function() calls for packages the module never declared. See ?codeCheckModule.

Enhancements

• Code-check reports group repeats of an issue under one heading, tag each finding with its check name so it can be pasted into a # nolint comment, and say how to silence the finding.
• restartSpades() remembers the events filter from the original spades() call. Pass events to override it. See ?restartSpades.
• saveSimList() documentation now describes its two modes -- portable (bundle everything) and in place (metadata only) -- with worked examples. See ?saveSimList.

Behaviour changes

• spades.moduleCodeChecks now defaults to FALSE, so module code checks no longer run on every simInit(). Run them with codeCheckModule() or codeCheckModules() instead, or set the option to TRUE to restore the old behaviour. See ?spadesOptions.
• Event and .inputObjects cacheIds change once with this release, because module paths and the parameter-definition table no longer contribute to them. After the one-time recompute, identical runs on different machines share a cache as intended.
• Figures cached by Plots(useCache = TRUE) are redrawn once, because the check for whether a plot has changed now covers more of the plot.

Dependency changes

• simInit() no longer installs or loads the box package. The spades.reqdPkgsDontLoad option now defaults to NULL, and the unused spades.useBox option has been removed.
• The caribouMovement sample module no longer requires sf, which it never used.
• Require now needs to be at least version 2.0.0. The previous minimum (1.0.1) was long out of date with the functions actually used.

Bug fixes

• A simList saved with saveSimList() can now be run after loadSimList(). Module functions were lost in the round trip, so a reloaded simulation could be inspected but not run. If the module source cannot be found, or needs a package that is not installed, loading now warns instead of failing. (#388)
• saveSimList(projectPath = ) no longer fails for a simulation holding file-backed objects. Such objects are also re-rooted correctly on load when they live under projectPath, and saving now warns when a backing file sits somewhere it cannot be re-rooted from, instead of producing an archive that fails to reload. (#389)
• saveSimList() and loadSimList() no longer create a stray cache/ directory in the caller's working directory, and archive extraction uses the directory it was given instead of extracting into the working directory.
• saveSimList(fileBackedDir = ) is accepted instead of causing an error.
• saveSimList() no longer errors when outputs(sim) has rows.
• Plots(useCache = TRUE) now redraws when a plot's facets, coordinate limits, theme, or position adjustments change. Such plots were previously treated as identical and the redraw was skipped.
• scheduleConditionalEvent() works with a non-zero minEventTime. Such events previously never fired, one that re-armed itself could loop forever at a single timestep, and adding one could error.
• defineEvent() now always registers the event function, which could previously be defined where nothing could find it. See ?defineEvent.
• Module metadata no longer errors with "external pointer is not valid" under terra >= 1.9-34.
• simInit() and spades() no longer error when debug is given as a multi-element list, and the usual .inputObjects and code-check messages are no longer suppressed in that case. (#322)
• simInit(objects = ) again loads all user-supplied objects when options(spades.allowInitDuringSimInit = TRUE).
• simInit() no longer errors when given params = list(.globals = ...) but no modules.
• A module's .inputObjects cache is invalidated when you edit a helper function it calls, not only when you edit .inputObjects itself.
• Quoted .useCacheArgs entries such as useCloud = quote(P(sim)$.useCloud) are evaluated in the module's own context on the .inputObjects path, so they now resolve to the right module's parameters.
• restartSimInit() restarts the module that actually failed, even when an earlier module's .inputObjects was cached. It also clears objects the interrupted run created, so a resume starts clean, and prefixes its messages the way simInit() does.
• Progress bars from archive::archive_extract() (e.g. via prepInputs()) no longer flood the log. They are throttled to one line per getOption("spades.progressInterval", 2) seconds on Windows, on non-dynamic terminals, and in logged or non-interactive runs.
• writeRNGInfo() records the RNG state instead of writing only ".", and writeEventInfo() writes to the full path it computed.
• Deprecation messages name the package to install, instead of reading "has been moved to .".
• convertTimeunit() returns the right value for whole-number conversions between units other than seconds.
• checkParams() returns NA when a simulation has no user modules, since nothing was checked.
• copyModule() creates its destination correctly and copies files sitting directly in the module's tests/ folder.
• The code checker no longer warns that an input has no default when it is guarded by suppliedElsewhere(), understands params(sim)[[currentModule(sim)]]$x as the current module's parameter, and no longer reports outputs assigned inside Cache() or compiler::cmpfun() wrappers as unused.
• The warning about giving an object the same name as a module explains why the clash matters.
• SpaDES.core loads cleanly when no cache location has been set, falling back to a temporary folder the way reproducible does. See ?setPaths.