simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
anyflights vs qtl2convert
A side-by-side editorial comparison of anyflights and qtl2convert — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
anyflights vs qtl2convert: 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 qtl2convert?
A conversion utility in pure maintenance mode, tracking R-devel breakage release by release
qtl2convert is the format-shim of the R/qtl2 ecosystem: it moves genotype probabilities and genetic maps between DOQTL, R/qtl and R/qtl2 representations. The last three releases contain no new conversion functions at all — 0.32 fixed a C string comparison flagged by CRAN, 0.34 restored attribute-clearing that R-devel 4.7 changed underneath the package, and 0.36 adjusted parallel core defaults plus a test tweak. The functional surface has been stable since 0.26 added cross2_ril_to_genril().
anyflights vs qtl2convert: 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.
qtl2convert
0.0ANALYTICS
A conversion utility in pure maintenance mode, tracking R-devel breakage release by release
◆ Current state
qtl2convert is the format-shim of the R/qtl2 ecosystem: it moves genotype probabilities and genetic maps between DOQTL, R/qtl and R/qtl2 representations. The last three releases contain no new conversion functions at all — 0.32 fixed a C string comparison flagged by CRAN, 0.34 restored attribute-clearing that R-devel 4.7 changed underneath the package, and 0.36 adjusted parallel core defaults plus a test tweak. The functional surface has been stable since 0.26 added cross2_ril_to_genril().
◆ Where it's heading
This is a package whose release cadence is driven by its dependencies, not its roadmap. Two of the last three releases exist purely because upstream R or CRAN's check suite moved; the maintainer responds within weeks and ships. The cores=0 change in 0.36 is the only user-visible behavior shift in over a year, and it landed simultaneously in sibling package qtl2fst — this is a maintainer-wide convention change, not a qtl2convert decision.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to be triggered by another R-devel or CRAN check change rather than a feature request, following the same pattern as 0.32 and 0.34.
Alternatives to anyflights and qtl2convert
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 qtl2convert.
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 qtl2convert alternatives →
Recent activity from anyflights and qtl2convert
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoqtl2convertcores=0 now leaves one core free instead of taking all
- 2mo agoqtl2convertAttribute-clearing fix for R-devel 4.7
- 3mo agoqtl2convertC string comparison fix in encode_geno()
- 1y agoanyflightsWeather output pinned to GMT and hourly gaps filled
- 2y agoqtl2convertBug fix in probs_doqtl_to_qtl2()
- 2y agoanyflightsPlanes data downloads restored
- 4y agoanyflightsAirline data URLs fixed and CI moved to GitHub Actions
- 4y agoanyflightsProgress reporting and faster weather retrieval
- 4y agoqtl2convertMaintenance release for a NEWS.md typo
- 4y agoqtl2convertAdds cross2_ril_to_genril() for RIL cross conversion
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between anyflights and qtl2convert?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. anyflights and qtl2convert 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 qtl2convert?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. anyflights and qtl2convert 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 qtl2convert?
Top qtl2convert alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "qtl2convert alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/qtl2convert for the full list with editorial commentary on each.