How to use the R plugin

Run R scripts for statistical computing and data analysis inside a container as flow steps.

Common properties

containerImage defaults to an R image (e.g., r-base). For data science workflows, consider images from the Rocker project (e.g., rocker/tidyverse) which include common packages pre-installed. taskRunner defaults to Docker and can be overridden for other execution environments.

Tasks

Script runs inline R code defined in the script property — best for short, flow-specific logic. Commands runs shell commands (e.g., Rscript main.R) against script files; use it when your code lives in namespace files shared across flows, or is cloned from a Git repository with a preceding Clone task.

Install CRAN packages in beforeCommands with Rscript -e 'install.packages(c("dplyr", "ggplot2"), repos="https://cloud.r-project.org")'. For reproducible environments, use a renv.lock file via namespace files and restore with Rscript -e 'renv: : restore()' — or build a custom containerImage with packages pre-installed to avoid per-run install time.

Triggers

ScriptTrigger

Polls on an interval by running an inline R script the same way the Script task does, and starts an execution when exitCondition matches. The script runs in a fresh container on every poll, so keep it quick — and remember that installing CRAN packages on each poll is rarely what you want; prefer an image that already has them.

Required properties:

• script: inline R script body
• exitCondition: either exit N, which matches when the script exits with code N, or a regex (with substring fallback) matched against the vars the script emits with : : {"outputs": {...}}: :

Optional:

• interval: time between polls, defaults to PT60S
• edge: defaults to true, so the trigger fires only when the condition changes from not matching to matching. The previous result is kept in the namespace KV store under a key starting with trigger-edge-. Set to false to fire on every matching poll
• containerImage: defaults to r-base

The trigger outputs are available as {{ trigger.timestamp }}, {{ trigger.condition }}, {{ trigger.exitCode }} and {{ trigger.vars }}. A failed run has no vars, so only an exit N condition can match a failure.

CommandsTrigger

Same behavior as ScriptTrigger, but runs a list of shell commands the way the Commands task does. Required properties are commands and exitCondition; interval, edge and containerImage work as above.