# ropensci/drake

An R-focused pipeline toolkit for reproducibility and high-performance computing

Repository: https://github.com/ropensci/drake
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/ropensci-drake
Homepage: https://docs.ropensci.org/drake
Language: R
License: GPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: reproducibility, high-performance-computing, r, data-science, drake, makefile, pipeline, workflow, reproducible-research, rstats, r-package, ropensci, peer-reviewed
Last push: 2024-12-04T11:25:31+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3481, "days_push": 637, "days_rel": 637, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1342, forks 129 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:26.302437+00:00)

## What it is
drake is an R package that acts as a Make-like pipeline toolkit for data science workflows, analyzing dependencies, skipping up-to-date steps, and orchestrating the rest with optional parallel/distributed computing. It is officially superseded by the targets package, though it still receives occasional CRAN compatibility releases.

## Use cases
- skip already-computed steps in a long R data analysis pipeline
- make my R research results reproducible and traceable to code and data
- run R workflow steps in parallel on an HPC cluster like SLURM
- avoid rerunning an entire analysis when only one script changes
- orchestrate a multi-step data science project with dependencies
- prove my published results match the underlying code and data

## When to choose
- you are maintaining or extending an existing drake-based project
- you need a Make-style incremental pipeline in R and cannot migrate yet

## When to avoid
- you are starting a new R pipeline project - use the targets successor instead
- you need workflows outside the R ecosystem
- you expect active feature development or new capabilities

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: workflow-automation, etl, developer-tools
- domain: data-science, developer-tools
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: r-package, pipeline-toolkit, make-like, high-performance-computing, superseded, ropensci, automation, reproducibility, r

## Member repositories
- ropensci/drake (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:26.302437+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:43:42.481003+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/ropensci/drake (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:26.302437+00:00, sha 1c7349171b60)
  - homepage: https://docs.ropensci.org/drake (fetched 2026-08-29T12:02:36.654867+00:00, sha 4390ce787e09)
  - site_page: https://docs.ropensci.org/drake/news/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T12:02:36.667001+00:00, sha 291d368c2152)
  - site_page: https://docs.ropensci.org/drake/authors.html (fetched 2026-08-29T12:02:36.671224+00:00, sha 7977f2265048)
  - site_page: https://ropensci.org/about (fetched 2026-08-29T12:02:36.672957+00:00, sha 21e3e45abb74)
  - site_page: https://docs.ropensci.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T12:02:36.674606+00:00, sha db4231ca5a42)
  - site_page: https://books.ropensci.org/drake/faq.html (fetched 2026-08-29T12:02:36.664939+00:00, sha c3abbe1be286)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.