vcfR
A genomics workhorse whose visible release feed stops dead in mid-2020.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
eatGADS vs massProps
A side-by-side editorial comparison of eatGADS and massProps — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
eatGADS vs massProps: at a glance
What is eatGADS?
Labelled survey data, one edge case at a time — and the edge cases are all about missing values.
eatGADS manages labelled survey and assessment data in R, the SPSS-descended world of value labels, missing tags, and metadata that has to survive every transformation. Releases are roughly annual and dense. The current one, 1.2.0, is about doing things in bulk: changing value labels, missing tags, and recodings across many variables at once rather than one at a time.
What is massProps?
A mass-properties rollup spends a year on documentation and follows its sibling's API
massProps computes mass, centre of mass and inertia tensors — and their uncertainties — over tree-structured assemblies, the calculation systems engineers run on a spacecraft or vehicle breakdown. It sits on top of rollupTree, the same author's generic recursive-computation engine, and its most recent release exists only to adopt accessor functions that sibling added two weeks earlier.
eatGADS vs massProps: editorial side-by-side
eatGADS
0.0INFRA · APIS
Labelled survey data, one edge case at a time — and the edge cases are all about missing values.
◆ Current state
eatGADS manages labelled survey and assessment data in R, the SPSS-descended world of value labels, missing tags, and metadata that has to survive every transformation. Releases are roughly annual and dense. The current one, 1.2.0, is about doing things in bulk: changing value labels, missing tags, and recodings across many variables at once rather than one at a time.
◆ Where it's heading
The feature line and the bug line point at the same thing from opposite directions. Features keep widening the aperture — multiple variables, multiple ID variables, comparisons within a single object — while fixes keep landing on the collision between value labels and missing codes, where a value can be labelled NA, duplicated, or tagged and transformed away. extractData() and extractData2() alone absorbed eight separate correctness fixes across the last two releases. The package is hardening the one place labelled data is most likely to lose information.
◆ Prediction
Expect the bulk-operation pattern to spread to the remaining single-variable functions, and continued fixes wherever value labels and missing tags interact; the extraction path is clearly still the weak point.
massProps
0.0INFRA · APIS
A mass-properties rollup spends a year on documentation and follows its sibling's API
◆ Current state
massProps computes mass, centre of mass and inertia tensors — and their uncertainties — over tree-structured assemblies, the calculation systems engineers run on a spacecraft or vehicle breakdown. It sits on top of rollupTree, the same author's generic recursive-computation engine, and its most recent release exists only to adopt accessor functions that sibling added two weeks earlier.
◆ Where it's heading
Every release in the window is documentation, benchmarks, or keeping in step with rollupTree. The inertia tensor and radius-of-gyration uncertainty equations have been reformatted and re-explained three separate times, which suggests the hard part of this package is not the computation but making the covariance treatment legible to the engineers meant to trust it. Development effort clearly sits in the engine underneath, not here.
◆ Prediction
The pattern is unambiguous: rollupTree ships an API change and massProps follows within a fortnight. Whatever the engine does next is what appears here next, and on this evidence it will arrive as a one-line release note.
Alternatives to eatGADS and massProps
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 eatGADS or massProps.
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 eatGADS alternatives → · See all massProps alternatives →
Recent activity from eatGADS and massProps
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6mo agomassPropsSwitched to rollupTree's new row accessors
- 6mo agomassPropsError in the inertia tensor uncertainty documentation
- 1y agomassPropsBenchmark results and equation layout cleaned up
- 1y agoeatGADSValue labels, missings, and recodes go multi-variable
- 1y agomassPropsCombine functions given consistent formal parameters
- 1y agomassPropsExamples shrunk to fit CRAN runtime limits
- 1y agoeatGADSTibble import and within-object difference inspection
- 3y agoeatGADSVariable clone, create, insert, and auto-recode round out the toolkit
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between eatGADS and massProps?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. eatGADS and massProps 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 eatGADS better than massProps?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. eatGADS and massProps 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 eatGADS?
Top eatGADS alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "eatGADS alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/eatgads for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to massProps?
Top massProps alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "massProps alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/massprops for the full list with editorial commentary on each.