simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
anyflights vs mmconvert
A side-by-side editorial comparison of anyflights and mmconvert — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
anyflights vs mmconvert: at a glance
What is anyflights?
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
anyflights builds nycflights13-style datasets for any US airport and year, downloading flight, weather, airline, airport, and plane tables and optionally packaging them. The four visible releases span 2022 to 2025 and are dominated by keeping those downloads working. The most recent fixes a timezone leak and gaps in hourly weather data.
What is mmconvert?
A single-purpose mouse map interpolator that solved its problem in 2023 and has coasted since
mmconvert does one thing: interpolate between GRCm39 physical positions and the revised Cox genetic map for mouse MUGA array markers. The substantive work all landed in a burst across 2021-2023 — the initial function, the GRCm39 annotation dataset, cross2_to_grcm39(), the recomputed Cox maps and their smoothed replacement. Everything since is upkeep: a warning-message fix in 0.12, and 0.14 is a test adjustment to silence a CRAN Note with no code change at all.
anyflights vs mmconvert: editorial side-by-side
anyflights
0.0ANALYTICS
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
◆ Current state
anyflights builds nycflights13-style datasets for any US airport and year, downloading flight, weather, airline, airport, and plane tables and optionally packaging them. The four visible releases span 2022 to 2025 and are dominated by keeping those downloads working. The most recent fixes a timezone leak and gaps in hourly weather data.
◆ Where it's heading
The function surface has been stable since 0.3; everything since concerns the fragility of the upstream sources. Broken URLs for airline data, download failures needing a session-timeout hint, planes data that stopped resolving, and weather values recorded only once an hour have each taken a release. Contributions come from teaching-adjacent users, which fits a package whose main use is generating course datasets.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to follow another upstream data-source change rather than to add a table or an argument.
mmconvert
0.0ANALYTICS
A single-purpose mouse map interpolator that solved its problem in 2023 and has coasted since
◆ Current state
mmconvert does one thing: interpolate between GRCm39 physical positions and the revised Cox genetic map for mouse MUGA array markers. The substantive work all landed in a burst across 2021-2023 — the initial function, the GRCm39 annotation dataset, cross2_to_grcm39(), the recomputed Cox maps and their smoothed replacement. Everything since is upkeep: a warning-message fix in 0.12, and 0.14 is a test adjustment to silence a CRAN Note with no code change at all.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has reached the natural end state of a reference-data converter — the reference data stopped moving, so the package stopped moving. Releases now arrive roughly annually and exist to keep CRAN checks green. The 0.14 release shipped the same day as sibling qtl2convert 0.36, confirming these are batch maintenance passes across the maintainer's packages rather than independent development.
◆ Prediction
Without a new mouse genome build or a revised Cox map, the next release is likely another CRAN-check accommodation rather than new functionality.
Alternatives to anyflights and mmconvert
Other Analytics 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 anyflights or mmconvert.
lavaanExtra
SEM reporting helpers converging on APA output, one CRAN resubmission at a time.
ibis.iSDM
A raster-to-terra migration is the only readable change in a feed of merge notes.
vinereg
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
stringx
A drop-in string API for base R, kept alive by upstream check failures.
healthyR.data
From a bundled hospital dataset to a live CMS API client.
See all anyflights alternatives → · See all mmconvert alternatives →
Recent activity from anyflights and mmconvert
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agommconvertTest adjustment to clear a CRAN Note
- 1y agommconvertFixes a malformed warning message in mmconvert()
- 1y agoanyflightsWeather output pinned to GMT and hourly gaps filled
- 2y agoanyflightsPlanes data downloads restored
- 3y agommconvertOmits X chromosome positions for sex-averaged and male maps
- 3y agommconvertCRAN release adds chromosome lengths and smoothed Cox maps
- 3y agommconvertRecomputed Cox genetic maps and combined-array support
- 4y agoanyflightsAirline data URLs fixed and CI moved to GitHub Actions
- 4y agoanyflightsProgress reporting and faster weather retrieval
- 4y agommconvertRepoints data sources from master to main branches
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between anyflights and mmconvert?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. anyflights and mmconvert 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 anyflights better than mmconvert?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. anyflights and mmconvert 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 Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to anyflights?
Top anyflights alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "anyflights alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/anyflights for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to mmconvert?
Top mmconvert alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "mmconvert alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mmconvert for the full list with editorial commentary on each.