vcfR
A genomics workhorse whose visible release feed stops dead in mid-2020.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
DMRnet vs ipeaplot
A side-by-side editorial comparison of DMRnet and ipeaplot — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
DMRnet vs ipeaplot: at a glance
What is DMRnet?
A categorical-variable selection package that publishes its full test logs as release candidates.
DMRnet implements delete-or-merge-regressors model selection for high-dimensional categorical data, alongside SOSnet and GLAMER variants from the same research group. Development is slow and academic — 0.4.0 in 2023, then two years to 0.4.1 in August 2025, which corrects an invalid lambda.1se computation and the cross-validation plots that displayed it. Every real release is preceded days earlier by a release-candidate entry containing the raw output of the correctness and consistency test suite.
What is ipeaplot?
An institutional chart theme whose recent releases are all vignette repair.
ipeaplot supplies Ipea's house style to ggplot2 — theme_ipea(), matching colour and fill scales, and export helpers that write the formats the institute's publications need. The feature line has been quiet since October, when save_ipeaplot() consolidated the format-specific savers. Both July releases exist to get the package building again, not to change it.
DMRnet vs ipeaplot: editorial side-by-side
DMRnet
0.0INFRA · APIS
A categorical-variable selection package that publishes its full test logs as release candidates.
◆ Current state
DMRnet implements delete-or-merge-regressors model selection for high-dimensional categorical data, alongside SOSnet and GLAMER variants from the same research group. Development is slow and academic — 0.4.0 in 2023, then two years to 0.4.1 in August 2025, which corrects an invalid lambda.1se computation and the cross-validation plots that displayed it. Every real release is preceded days earlier by a release-candidate entry containing the raw output of the correctness and consistency test suite.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is converging on correctness rather than expanding. 0.3.3 was a wall of fixes to inference, log-likelihood, and degenerate cross-validation cases; 0.4.0 added the var_sel algorithm and brought GLAMER into the package's own net idiom over its tau parameter; 0.4.1 is again a statistical correctness fix. The published test-log releases are the tell — this maintainer treats reproducible evidence that hard cases still pass as part of the release artifact, which is unusual outside academic statistical software.
◆ Prediction
Given the two-year gap before 0.4.1 and its narrow scope, the next release is most likely another correctness fix arriving on a multi-year cadence, again preceded by a full test-log release candidate.
ipeaplot
0.0INFRA · APIS
An institutional chart theme whose recent releases are all vignette repair.
◆ Current state
ipeaplot supplies Ipea's house style to ggplot2 — theme_ipea(), matching colour and fill scales, and export helpers that write the formats the institute's publications need. The feature line has been quiet since October, when save_ipeaplot() consolidated the format-specific savers. Both July releases exist to get the package building again, not to change it.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has been converging on a smaller, more uniform surface: separate save_eps() and save_pdf() helpers gave way to one save_ipeaplot() covering vector and raster formats with sensible defaults, and the Frutiger font dependency was dropped for a default sans-serif. What consumes releases now is downstream breakage — two consecutive patches in ten days, the second traced to geobr, both in vignettes rather than package code.
◆ Prediction
The palette line has grown one colour set at a time and is the most likely place for the next addition, but nothing in these entries commits to it. On current evidence the near term is more compatibility patching against the geobr and ggplot2 packages the vignettes depend on.
Alternatives to DMRnet and ipeaplot
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either DMRnet or ipeaplot.
dialr
The R phone-number package stopped only parsing numbers and started asking them where they are.
ggVennDiagram
A Venn diagram package whose public release notes say almost nothing — including about its copyright cleanup.
ordinalsimr
A Shiny app for choosing the right ordinal test reached CRAN in a single 90-minute burst of tags.
transltr
A new R localization package that reached CRAN and immediately downgraded itself to experimental.
hereR
An R client for HERE's location APIs, shaped almost entirely by what the vendor exposes next.
See all DMRnet alternatives → · See all ipeaplot alternatives →
Recent activity from DMRnet and ipeaplot
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoipeaplotVignette fix for geobr breakage
- 1mo agoipeaplotPatch for a vignette build error
- 10mo agoipeaplotsave_ipeaplot() unifies vector and raster export
- 1y agoDMRnetInvalid lambda.1se computation corrected in cross-validation
- 1y agoDMRnetTest-suite log published ahead of the 0.4.1 release
- 1y agoipeaplotPink palette added; axis break and categorical Y-axis fixes
- 1y agoipeaplotFrutiger dropped for a default sans-serif; save_pdf() added
- 2y agoipeaplottheme_ipea, colour and fill scales, save_eps on CRAN
- 3y agoDMRnetvar_sel added; GLAMER reworked as a net over tau
- 3y agoDMRnetTest-suite log published ahead of the 0.4.0 release
- 3y agoDMRnetInference, log-likelihood, and degenerate-CV fixes across all model families
- 3y agoDMRnetTest-suite log published ahead of the 0.3.3 release
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between DMRnet and ipeaplot?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. DMRnet and ipeaplot are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is DMRnet better than ipeaplot?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. DMRnet and ipeaplot are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to DMRnet?
Top DMRnet alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "DMRnet alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dmrnet for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to ipeaplot?
Top ipeaplot alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ipeaplot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ipeaplot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.