ggpointless
ggpointless keeps adding the ggplot2 layers nobody else bothered to write.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
inlabru vs neonUtilities
A side-by-side editorial comparison of inlabru and neonUtilities — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
inlabru vs neonUtilities: at a glance
What is inlabru?
A Bayesian spatial modelling package rebuilding its foundations one breaking release at a time
inlabru wraps INLA for spatial, point-process and latent-Gaussian models in R. It is mid-modernisation: since 2.12.0 cut the sp stack, each release has renamed part of the public surface, standardised how external packages attach custom mappers, or replaced internal machinery. 2.15.0 is the latest step, pairing a new predictor evaluation and linearisation implementation with broom's tidy(), glance() and augment() methods and four non-zero-truncated observation families.
What is neonUtilities?
Two major versions shipped in a year, and this feed will not say what changed in either.
neonUtilities is the R toolkit NEON publishes for pulling and assembling its own observatory data — downloading data products through the NEON API, unzipping and stacking monthly packages into analysis-ready tables, and handling the awkward cases like eddy-covariance and airborne data. It reached 4.0.0 in June and 4.0.1 in July. What those releases contain is not recoverable from this feed: every recent entry is a one-line pointer saying the tag corresponds to a CRAN version, with the change log left in NEWS.md.
inlabru vs neonUtilities: editorial side-by-side
inlabru
2.5INFRA · APIS
A Bayesian spatial modelling package rebuilding its foundations one breaking release at a time
◆ Current state
inlabru wraps INLA for spatial, point-process and latent-Gaussian models in R. It is mid-modernisation: since 2.12.0 cut the sp stack, each release has renamed part of the public surface, standardised how external packages attach custom mappers, or replaced internal machinery. 2.15.0 is the latest step, pairing a new predictor evaluation and linearisation implementation with broom's tidy(), glance() and augment() methods and four non-zero-truncated observation families.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc is consolidation of the extension surface rather than expansion of the model catalogue. Every release adds mappers or families with one hand and removes a dependency, a re-export or a deprecated path with the other — plyr in 2.15.0, fmesher's Depends entry in 2.14.1, sp and ggmap in 2.12.0. The compatibility flag bru_compat_pre_2_14_enable and the temporary fm_int/fm_pixels re-exports show a maintainer sequencing breaks across releases instead of landing them together.
◆ Prediction
The 2.14 compatibility flag is still defaulting to TRUE and the fmesher re-exports are described in the entries as temporary, so the next obvious move is a release that flips bru_compat_pre_2_14_enable off and drops those re-exports.
neonUtilities
0.0INFRA · APIS
Two major versions shipped in a year, and this feed will not say what changed in either.
◆ Current state
neonUtilities is the R toolkit NEON publishes for pulling and assembling its own observatory data — downloading data products through the NEON API, unzipping and stacking monthly packages into analysis-ready tables, and handling the awkward cases like eddy-covariance and airborne data. It reached 4.0.0 in June and 4.0.1 in July. What those releases contain is not recoverable from this feed: every recent entry is a one-line pointer saying the tag corresponds to a CRAN version, with the change log left in NEWS.md.
◆ Where it's heading
Release cadence has picked up sharply — 3.0.0 through 4.0.1 in under a year, against multi-year gaps before that — and two major-version bumps in that window normally imply breaking changes for anyone pinning the package in a reproducible workflow. Direction cannot be read from the entries themselves. The one substantive note in the feed is older and instructive about how this repository is used: a 2023 development tag that modified stackEddy() to avoid NEON API calls for internal processing pipelines, explicitly not for public use and never submitted to CRAN.
◆ Prediction
No prediction is supportable from these entries — they contain no description of any change. What can be said is that the 3.x-to-4.x jump and the tight 4.0.0-to-4.0.1 turnaround fit the usual shape of a major release followed by a fix, and anyone depending on the package should read NEWS.md rather than this feed.
Alternatives to inlabru and neonUtilities
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 inlabru or neonUtilities.
mpactr
mpactr spent two spring releases normalizing case in metadata after users kept tripping on it.
surveytidy
surveytidy taught every dplyr verb to operate on a whole collection of surveys at once.
surveycore
surveycore declared its API stable with every survey design type covered.
PEIMAN2
PEIMAN2 cut its annotation database loose from its release cycle without breaking CRAN.
prospectr
prospectr spent its biggest release in years fixing spectra it had been quietly mangling.
See all inlabru alternatives → · See all neonUtilities alternatives →
Recent activity from inlabru and neonUtilities
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 23d agoinlabruPredictor linearisation rewritten; broom tidiers, truncated families
- 1mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 4.0.1
- 1mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 4.0.0
- 3mo agoinlabruBugfix release: factor contrasts, raster extraction, error classes
- 5mo agoinlabruNew mappers, standardised cgeneric support, bru_obs storage refactor
- 6mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 3.0.3
- 10mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 3.0.2
- 11mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 3.0.1
- 1y agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 3.0.0
- 1y agoinlabruMapper classes shortened to bm_*, experimental predictor aggregation
- 1y agoinlabruDrops sp and ggmap for an sf-native spatial stack ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between inlabru and neonUtilities?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. inlabru is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is inlabru better than neonUtilities?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. inlabru is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to inlabru?
Top inlabru alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "inlabru alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/inlabru for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to neonUtilities?
Top neonUtilities alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "neonUtilities alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/neonutilities for the full list with editorial commentary on each.