Download a pre-built taxify backbone

Downloads a pre-built .vtr backbone from GitHub Releases using the taxify manifest. This needs no build tools and does not require taxifydb; it is the fast path taxify() uses internally on first use. Call it directly to pre-fetch backbones before an offline session. Progress is always shown; no prompts are shown, so calling this function is consent.

Usage

taxify_download(
  backbone = "wfo",
  version = "latest",
  content_id = NULL,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

backbone

Character. A backbone name (e.g. "wfo", "col", "gbif", ...; see the backbones in list_enrichments()'s companion manifest) or "register" for the genus register. Multiple backbones can be given as a character vector.

version

Character. "latest" (default) downloads into <data_dir>/<backbone>/latest/ and will be overwritten on future updates. A specific version string (e.g., "2024.01") downloads into a pinned folder that is never overwritten.

content_id

Character or NULL (default). The content id of one exact build – the md5 of its .vtr, as recorded by taxify_lock() and by the manifest. Given one, taxify fetches that build from the immutable copy published beside the rolling asset, verifies the bytes hash back to the id, and makes it the active backbone; the build it replaces is kept under its own content id. Pass one id per backbone, or one shared by all of them.

verbose

Logical. Default TRUE.

Value

The path(s) to the downloaded .vtr file(s) (invisibly).

Details

If no pre-built .vtr is available for a backbone, it falls back to building from source via taxify_build() (which requires taxifydb).

See also

taxify_build() to build a backbone from source via taxifydb, taxify_download_enrichment() for enrichment layers, taxify_store() for the builds already on disk.