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backgroudjobR

Overview

backgroudjobR is an R package that provides robust and flexible solutions for executing R scripts with comprehensive error handling, logging, and background processing capabilities. Whether you need to run scripts locally, in the background, or on remote servers, this package offers the tools to do so safely and efficiently. This package is powered by the powerful mirai package, for providing the background execution and automatic load balancing framework.

Key Features

  • 🔒 Safe Execution: Run R scripts in isolated environments with comprehensive error handling
  • 📝 Comprehensive Logging: Automatic logging of execution progress, errors, and memory usage (Please refer to package website’s Article -> Log Example for details)
  • 💾 Auto-Recovery: Automatic environment saving when errors occur for debugging
  • 🚀 Background Processing: Execute jobs in background using the powerful mirai framework
  • 🖥️ Server-Friendly: Create standalone projects for execution with screen, tmux, or nohup
  • 📊 Memory Monitoring: Built-in memory usage tracking and limits
  • ⚡ Parallel Execution: Support for multiple background jobs with automatic load balancing (by mirai)

Aim

Do you miss RStudio’s background jobs feature in terminal, VSCode or in the new developed IDE Positron? Though Positron have a multiple-console feature, but it is unstable in many cases (See their github issues).

So backgroudjobR is developed for solve this problem.

Installation

You can install the development version of backgroudjobR from GitHub:

# Install from GitHub
if (!require(remotes)) install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("ZhimingYe/backgroudjobR")

Get Start

See package website for details.

  • Basic guidance for usage.

  • The output example help you understand what this package doing.

  • When you facing errors in non-standard evaluations?

Use Cases

🔬 Research and Data Analysis

  • Run long-running statistical analyses safely
  • Process large datasets with memory monitoring
  • Execute multiple analysis pipelines in parallel

🖥️ Server and HPC Environments

  • Create persistent jobs that survive session disconnections
  • Run analyses on remote servers using screen/tmux
  • Batch processing with automatic error recovery

🐛 Debugging and Development

  • Safe script testing with automatic environment saving
  • Detailed logging for troubleshooting
  • Isolated execution environments

Acknowledgments

  • The mirai package for providing the background execution framework