simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
anyflights vs qtl2fst
A side-by-side editorial comparison of anyflights and qtl2fst — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
anyflights vs qtl2fst: 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 qtl2fst?
The out-of-memory backend for R/qtl2, feature-complete since 2020 and now purely on upkeep
qtl2fst backs R/qtl2 genotype probabilities with on-disk fst files so large crosses don't have to fit in RAM. Its defining release was 0.22 in 2020, which added calc_genoprob_fst() and genoprob_to_alleleprob_fst() to fuse calculation and storage in one step. The five releases since are documentation links, directory-creation robustness, a Windows example fix, and — in 0.32 — a change to how cores=0 is interpreted.
anyflights vs qtl2fst: 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.
qtl2fst
0.0ANALYTICS
The out-of-memory backend for R/qtl2, feature-complete since 2020 and now purely on upkeep
◆ Current state
qtl2fst backs R/qtl2 genotype probabilities with on-disk fst files so large crosses don't have to fit in RAM. Its defining release was 0.22 in 2020, which added calc_genoprob_fst() and genoprob_to_alleleprob_fst() to fuse calculation and storage in one step. The five releases since are documentation links, directory-creation robustness, a Windows example fix, and — in 0.32 — a change to how cores=0 is interpreted.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has settled into the role of a stable satellite of R/qtl2: it tracks the parent package's conventions rather than setting its own. The cores=0 change in 0.32 arrived alongside the identical change in qtl2convert, so the parallel-computing default is being standardized across the maintainer's packages at once. Release intervals have stretched from months to years.
◆ Prediction
Further releases will most likely mirror changes originating in R/qtl2 or CRAN checks, in the same follow-the-parent pattern as 0.24 and 0.32.
Alternatives to anyflights and qtl2fst
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 qtl2fst.
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 qtl2fst alternatives →
Recent activity from anyflights and qtl2fst
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoqtl2fstcores=0 now leaves one core free instead of taking all
- 1y agoanyflightsWeather output pinned to GMT and hourly gaps filled
- 1y agoqtl2fstWindows fix for the replace_path() example
- 2y agoqtl2fstDocumentation link fix
- 2y agoanyflightsPlanes data downloads restored
- 4y agoanyflightsAirline data URLs fixed and CI moved to GitHub Actions
- 4y agoanyflightsProgress reporting and faster weather retrieval
- 4y agoqtl2fstCreates missing directories instead of erroring out
- 5y agoqtl2fstTest coverage for qtl2 functions against fst-backed probabilities
- 6y agoqtl2fstDocumentation and metadata cleanup for CRAN
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between anyflights and qtl2fst?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. anyflights and qtl2fst 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 qtl2fst?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. anyflights and qtl2fst 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 qtl2fst?
Top qtl2fst alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "qtl2fst alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/qtl2fst for the full list with editorial commentary on each.