rollupTree
The recursive-computation engine under massProps grows the accessors its consumer needed
Comparison · Infra & APIs
neonUtilities vs surveytidy
A side-by-side editorial comparison of neonUtilities and surveytidy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-packages
neonUtilities vs surveytidy: at a glance
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.
What is surveytidy?
surveytidy taught every dplyr verb to operate on a whole collection of surveys at once.
surveytidy is the tidyverse-facing half of a two-package survey stack, wrapping survey design objects from surveycore so filter, mutate, select and the rest work on them while carrying variable labels, value labels and a transformation log alongside the data. The May release extended that verb surface to survey_collection, the abstraction surveycore uses to hold several surveys as one object, so a pipeline written once dispatches across every member.
neonUtilities vs surveytidy: editorial side-by-side
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.
surveytidy
0.0INFRA · APIS
surveytidy taught every dplyr verb to operate on a whole collection of surveys at once.
◆ Current state
surveytidy is the tidyverse-facing half of a two-package survey stack, wrapping survey design objects from surveycore so filter, mutate, select and the rest work on them while carrying variable labels, value labels and a transformation log alongside the data. The May release extended that verb surface to survey_collection, the abstraction surveycore uses to hold several surveys as one object, so a pipeline written once dispatches across every member.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being built in two layers that arrive in order: vector-level transformations first, structural dispatch second. The make_* family in 0.4.0 handles the recoding that survey work actually consists of — labelled to factor, multi-level to dichotomous, scale reversal, valence flipping — with value labels propagating automatically. Collection support then applies data-masking, tidyselect, grouping, slicing and collapsing verbs per survey, with joins explicitly refused and a typed message reporting which surveys were skipped. Metadata fidelity is the recurring bug source: labels surviving across(), stale labels left behind by recoding, the transformation log keeping up with what the verbs did.
◆ Prediction
Joins are the one verb family that errors on collections, with users directed to join before constructing the collection, so that restriction is the clearest outstanding gap. The re-export of surveycore's collection constructors suggests the package is positioning itself as the single import users need, which points toward more re-exports as surveycore's stable API settles.
Alternatives to neonUtilities and surveytidy
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 neonUtilities or surveytidy.
massProps
A mass-properties rollup spends a year on documentation and follows its sibling's API
writeAlizer
Six months of releases and not one of them touched the scoring models
samplr
A cognitive-science sampling package ships once, then goes quiet for eighteen months
stochvol
A Bayesian volatility sampler in its maintenance decade, paying for its own speed
midr
A black-box interpreter reaches CRAN, then learns multi-class and survival responses
See all neonUtilities alternatives → · See all surveytidy alternatives →
Recent activity from neonUtilities and surveytidy
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 4.0.1
- 1mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 4.0.0
- 2mo agosurveytidymutate() syncs metadata for across() recodes
- 3mo agosurveytidydplyr and tidyr verbs dispatch across survey collections
- 5mo agosurveytidyFive label-aware recoding functions for use inside mutate()
- 6mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 3.0.3
- 10mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 3.0.2
- 11mo agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 3.0.1
- 1y agoneonUtilitiesneonUtilities version 3.0.0
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between neonUtilities and surveytidy?
Both compete on the same themes — r-packages — within Infra & APIs. neonUtilities and surveytidy 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 neonUtilities better than surveytidy?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. neonUtilities and surveytidy 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 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.
What are the best alternatives to surveytidy?
Top surveytidy alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "surveytidy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/surveytidy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.