Returns the atlas version changelog as a tibble

Downloads the atlas_versions.parquet registry from the cellNexus metadata store, caches it locally, and returns it as an in-memory tibble. Each row describes one atlas data release and its relationship to a CellxGene Census snapshot.

Usage

get_atlas_versions(cache = tempdir())

Source

Mangiola et al.,2023

Arguments

cache

Optional character scalar. A local directory used to cache the downloaded parquet file. Defaults to a temporary directory to separate from the main cache directory.

Value

A tibble with columns:

atlas_id

Atlas version identifier, e.g. "cellxgene_2024/0.1.0". Matches the atlas_id column in get_metadata().

census_version

The CellxGene Census snapshot this atlas was built from, e.g. "01-07-2024".

change_type

One of "initial", "patch", "minor", or "major". See ATLAS_VERSIONS.md for the conventions standards.

description

Summary text of what changed in this release.

modified_at

Modification date as a character scalar ("YYYY-MM-DD"). By default use Sys.Date()

Details

The atlas_id column in this table corresponds directly to the atlas_id column returned by get_metadata(), so you can join them to find which Census snapshot any cell in your query came from.

References

Mangiola, S., M. Milton, N. Ranathunga, C. S. N. Li-Wai-Suen, A. Odainic, E. Yang, W. Hutchison et al. "A multi-organ map of the human immune system across age, sex and ethnicity." bioRxiv (2023): 2023-06. doi:10.1101/2023.06.08.542671.

See also

• CellxGene Census data releases (LTS): https://chanzuckerberg.github.io/cellxgene-census/cellxgene_census_docsite_data_release_info.html

Examples

get_atlas_versions()
#> ℹ Downloading https://object-store.rc.nectar.org.au/v1/AUTH_06d6e008e3e642da99d806ba3ea629c5/cellNexus-metadata/atlas_versions.parquet to /tmp/RtmphowDEf/atlas_versions.parquet
#> # A tibble: 4 × 5
#>   atlas_id             census_version change_type description        modified_at
#>   <chr>                <chr>          <chr>       <chr>              <chr>      
#> 1 cellxgene_2024/0.1.0 01-07-2024     initial     Initial release l… 2026-03-26 
#> 2 hta_2025/0.1.0       21-10-2025     initial     Initial release i… 2026-03-26 
#> 3 cellxgene_2024/0.2.0 01-07-2024     minor       Changed file id c… 2026-04-16 
#> 4 cellxgene_2024/0.2.1 01-07-2024     bug         Fixed cell type m… 2026-04-21