Issue with tar_prune(): no applicable method for 'store_class_format' applied to an object of class "c('NA', 'character')"

[popovs]

Prework

• I have read and understand help guide.
• I understand and agree to contributing guide.
• I am confident this issue is a bug in targets itself, not a user error or a bug in a different package. I have done troubleshooting on my own to verify this. User questions which are not bugs in targets should be posted as discussions instead of bug reports.
• I am posting a runnable reprex to help others troubleshoot.

Description

I'm trying to run tar_prune() to clean up old targets in my workspace. However, I'm getting this error message when running it:

── Last error message ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    no applicable method for 'store_class_format' applied to an object of class "c('NA', 'character')"

── Last error traceback ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    base::tryCatch(base::withCallingHandlers({ NULL base::saveRDS(base::do.c...
    tryCatchList(expr, classes, parentenv, handlers)
    tryCatchOne(tryCatchList(expr, names[-nh], parentenv, handlers[-nh]), na...
    doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler)
    tryCatchList(expr, names[-nh], parentenv, handlers[-nh])
    tryCatchOne(expr, names, parentenv, handlers[[1L]])
    doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler)
    base::withCallingHandlers({ NULL base::saveRDS(base::do.call(base::do.ca...
    base::saveRDS(base::do.call(base::do.call, base::c(base::readRDS("C:\\Us...
    base::do.call(base::do.call, base::c(base::readRDS("C:\\Users\\SPOPOV\\A...
    (function (what, args, quote = FALSE, envir = parent.frame()) { if (!is....
    (function (targets_function, targets_arguments, options, envir = NULL, s...
    tryCatch(out <- withCallingHandlers(targets::tar_callr_inner_try(targets...
    tryCatchList(expr, classes, parentenv, handlers)
    tryCatchOne(expr, names, parentenv, handlers[[1L]])
    doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler)
    withCallingHandlers(targets::tar_callr_inner_try(targets_function = targ...
    targets::tar_callr_inner_try(targets_function = targets_function, target...
    do.call(targets_function, targets_arguments)
    (function (pipeline, cloud, path_store, batch_size, verbose) { tar_asser...
    tar_delete_cloud_objects(names = discard, meta = data, path_store = path...
    record_bootstrap_store(record)
    store_init(format = record$format, repository = record$repository, resou...
    store_enclass(store, format = format, repository = repository)
    store_class_format(store_dispatch_format(format))

This seems like a somewhat related issue here, but I'm not sure how to apply the fix suggested here.

reprex

I'm afraid I don't know how to create a reprex for my issue, but am supplying a snippet of my meta file. The target in question that I am trying to prune is called elk_edge_dist. I suspect the NA in the 'data' column is the source of the issue (I was never able to actually generate this target and aborted it before it finished).

MARKDOWN TABLE meta format

name	type	data	command	depend	seed	path	time	size	bytes	format	repository	iteration	parent	children	seconds	warnings	error
elk_dotplot	stem	f97b25251981ccbd	94d5abc6f5fa7398	8fc5526c49993967	-2021513789		t20244.0874329938s	62faeb6636941929	146095434	rds	local	vector			0.04
elk_edge_dist	stem		750c57fbe59b46ff	59dcc1c7814e9a94	1453884132		t20145.8299426399s		0	rds	local	vector			0.53		edges must be a sf class geometry.
elk_fix_hist	function	b6a5bc4295baa22d
elk_lidar	stem	aeac4a3e7cd13c81	aa7b666448798592	2ac97a3e285f6218	1826535428		t20185.6511342263s	dbfa33c4279072c1	1343135	rds	local	vector			62.39

RAW meta format
name|type|data|command|depend|seed|path|time|size|bytes|format|repository|iteration|parent|children|seconds|warnings|error
elk_dotplot|stem|f97b25251981ccbd|94d5abc6f5fa7398|8fc5526c49993967|-2021513789||t20244.0874329938s|62faeb6636941929|146095434|rds|local|vector|||0.04||
elk_edge_dist|stem||750c57fbe59b46ff|59dcc1c7814e9a94|1453884132||t20145.8299426399s||0|rds|local|vector|||0.53||edges must be a sf class geometry.
elk_fix_hist|function|b6a5bc4295baa22d|||||||||||||||
elk_lidar|stem|aeac4a3e7cd13c81|aa7b666448798592|2ac97a3e285f6218|1826535428||t20185.6511342263s|dbfa33c4279072c1|1343135|rds|local|vector|||62.39||

[wlandau]

@popovs, could it be an instance of #1339 or #1157? In the former case, targets was upgraded mid-project. In the latter case, a target name conflicted with a function name, and something about how the conflict arose may have messed with the metadata.

[popovs]

@wlandau many thanks for your time to help! I appreciate it. I've checked that it's not a name conflict, but it's possible I upgraded targets midway through. However I don't use format = 'file_fast' at any point.

Some more context that may or may not be helpful: this target was a huge GIS operation that was still running after several days. I decided to abandon that route and cut the GIS operation out of the pipeline altogether. I distinctly remember terminating R to stop it. Then I commented out that target from my pipeline.

tar_target(elk_edge_dist, my_gis_fxn(arg_1, arg_2) # <- now I want to prune this thing I failed to generate. Can you prune something that's not there??

[wlandau]

If it was never generated in the first place, you could try tar_invalidate(elk_edge_dist) to remove it from the metadata.

[popovs]

tar_invalidate() was the ticket! Turns out I also had an old target that was a file path that I forgot to add format = "file" to, which also was messing things up. Running tar_invalidate(<bad giant file path target name>) + tar_prune() solved everything.

Thank you!!