Retool
Retool is retiring standalone Assist while folding the same capability into the app builder.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of KRLS and projoint — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
A 2014 kernel regression method getting the scalability and tooling it never had, in a three-release afternoon.
KRLS fits kernel regularized least squares, a method whose exact form requires an n-by-n kernel matrix and therefore stops being usable well before modern sample sizes. Three releases shipped within 33 minutes of each other addressed exactly that: a Nystrom approximation mode with conditional approximate inference, kmeans landmark selection with an accessor for reusing landmarks across fits, and GCV as an alternative to leave-one-out for choosing lambda. The default path remains the exact one, and existing calls are unchanged.
projoint spent a year on CRAN paperwork, then shipped a correctness fix it flagged itself.
projoint is an R package for analysing conjoint survey experiments, covering Qualtrics import, reshaping, and quantity-of-interest estimation with inter-rater reliability correction. Most of its release history is CRAN admission work — citation formats, DESCRIPTION fields, \value{} tags, vignette cleanups — with four tags backfilled within ninety seconds of each other on 15 July in non-monotonic version order, so neither tag order nor timestamps in this feed track the real sequence. The substantive releases are the ones fixing data-preparation bugs that silently corrupt estimates.
KRLS fits kernel regularized least squares, a method whose exact form requires an n-by-n kernel matrix and therefore stops being usable well before modern sample sizes. Three releases shipped within 33 minutes of each other addressed exactly that: a Nystrom approximation mode with conditional approximate inference, kmeans landmark selection with an accessor for reusing landmarks across fits, and GCV as an alternative to leave-one-out for choosing lambda. The default path remains the exact one, and existing calls are unchanged.
The package is being modernized on two tracks that reinforce each other. The interface track — a formula method, broom extractors, autoplot, summary and glance diagnostics — makes the estimator fit contemporary R workflows without touching the algorithm, and the notes are explicit that existing matrix-interface calls remain bit-identical. The performance track removes the reasons it could not be run at all: the Nystrom mode for the kernel matrix, and an average-marginal-effects variance computation rewritten via a row-sum identity to quadratic per-predictor cost. Everything is added as opt-in, which suggests the goal is reaching new users without disturbing replication of published results.
With approximation, landmark reuse, and a second lambda criterion now in place, the remaining gap is guidance on when to trust them; the scaling vignette shipped alongside GCV points to more empirical validation rather than new estimation machinery.
projoint is an R package for analysing conjoint survey experiments, covering Qualtrics import, reshaping, and quantity-of-interest estimation with inter-rater reliability correction. Most of its release history is CRAN admission work — citation formats, DESCRIPTION fields, \value{} tags, vignette cleanups — with four tags backfilled within ninety seconds of each other on 15 July in non-monotonic version order, so neither tag order nor timestamps in this feed track the real sequence. The substantive releases are the ones fixing data-preparation bugs that silently corrupt estimates.
The maintainer is hardening the path from raw Qualtrics export to estimate, which is where conjoint analysis quietly goes wrong. Three separate releases fix that path: dropped respondent-level weights in organize_data(), repeated-task reshaping in reshape_projoint(), and choice-to-profile mapping in 1.1.3. Each fix now arrives with regression tests and stricter validation rather than just a patch, and 1.1.3 adds an explicit .choice_map so the mapping is auditable instead of inferred.
Expect the validation-and-regression-test pattern to keep extending across the import path, with releases continuing to arrive in bursts around CRAN submission rather than on a cadence.
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 KRLS or projoint.
Retool is retiring standalone Assist while folding the same capability into the app builder.
WPML made machine translation the default, and its point releases keep chasing WordPress and page builders.
A forest plot package that keeps handing users control of one more graphical detail.
Interval-valued data plotting, spending 2026 making its function names and examples survive CRAN.
A microbiome network model that got itself un-archived by deleting the dependency that killed it.
Three releases in ten days, every one of them a CRAN reviewer's correction rather than a code change.
See all KRLS alternatives → · See all projoint alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. projoint 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. projoint 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.
Top KRLS alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "KRLS alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/krls for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top projoint alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "projoint alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/projoint for the full list with editorial commentary on each.