simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
aqp vs incase
A side-by-side editorial comparison of aqp and incase — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
aqp vs incase: at a glance
What is aqp?
The 1.x line, tagged retroactively after a decade of SoilProfileCollection redesign.
aqp provides the SoilProfileCollection class and the algorithms built on it for soil profile data, colour, and taxonomy. The most recent tag in this feed is explicitly retroactive: 1.42 was cut in 2025 to mark the last CRAN state before the 2.0 release. Between 2018 and 2021 the class internals were reworked twice, the Munsell colour tooling grew substantially, and data.table replaced reshape underneath the wide-to-long transformations.
What is incase?
A safer case_when that keeps hardening its guarantees while realigning to tidyverse naming.
incase supplies in_case(), switch_case(), grep_case() and fn_case() as vectorised recoding functions in the dplyr::case_when idiom, with _fct and _list variants that return factors or lists instead of forcing atomic type conversion. The 0.4.0 release deprecates the undotted preserve, default and ordered arguments in favour of dotted forms, starting a removal clock, and adds .exhaustive to error on unmatched inputs.
aqp vs incase: editorial side-by-side
aqp
0.0ANALYTICS
The 1.x line, tagged retroactively after a decade of SoilProfileCollection redesign.
◆ Current state
aqp provides the SoilProfileCollection class and the algorithms built on it for soil profile data, colour, and taxonomy. The most recent tag in this feed is explicitly retroactive: 1.42 was cut in 2025 to mark the last CRAN state before the 2.0 release. Between 2018 and 2021 the class internals were reworked twice, the Munsell colour tooling grew substantially, and data.table replaced reshape underneath the wide-to-long transformations.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run through the window. The core object was progressively rebuilt - a new horizon-ID slot in 1.17, then a wave of renames and argument removals in 1.25 that broke code deliberately ahead of 2.0. Alongside it, colour work compounded: mixMunsell, spectral mixing, colour quantiles, a chip-frequency chart, and PMS conversion. Tag order here is not release order, since 1.42 was applied to an older commit.
◆ Prediction
This feed reads as a closed chapter - further entries on it would be backfill, with active work having moved to the 2.x series.
incase
0.0ANALYTICS
A safer case_when that keeps hardening its guarantees while realigning to tidyverse naming.
◆ Current state
incase supplies in_case(), switch_case(), grep_case() and fn_case() as vectorised recoding functions in the dplyr::case_when idiom, with _fct and _list variants that return factors or lists instead of forcing atomic type conversion. The 0.4.0 release deprecates the undotted preserve, default and ordered arguments in favour of dotted forms, starting a removal clock, and adds .exhaustive to error on unmatched inputs.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc is consistently toward catching recoding mistakes at the call site rather than letting them pass silently. Early releases broadened how a match can be expressed — pattern matching, function application, factor and list returns. Recent work has shifted to guarantees about the result: correct factor level ordering relative to .default, and now an exhaustiveness check. Notably 0.4.0 reverses the 0.3.2 decision to accept arguments with or without dots, trading that flexibility for namespace safety against user-supplied case names.
◆ Prediction
The deprecation warnings introduced in 0.4.0 point to a follow-up release that removes the undotted arguments outright. Whether .exhaustive eventually becomes the default is unclear from these entries.
Alternatives to aqp and incase
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 aqp or incase.
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.
anyflights
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
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.
Recent activity from aqp and incase
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 11mo agoincaseDotted arguments and an .exhaustive matching check
- 1y agoaqpRetroactive tag for the last 1.x CRAN state
- 2y agoincaseDotted and undotted arguments both accepted
- 4y agoaqpMunsell mixing gains an exact spectral method
- 5y agoincaseFix NULL return when no condition matches
- 5y agoincaseFactor and list return families arrive
- 5y agoaqpdata.table replaces reshape under the class internals
- 5y agoincaseDrop unused stats import to clear a check NOTE
- 5y agoincasePattern and function-based matching families added
- 5y agoaqpCore class methods renamed and pruned ahead of 2.0 ⚡
- 7y agoaqpNew horizon-ID slot closes the 1.x major line
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between aqp and incase?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. aqp and incase 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 aqp better than incase?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. aqp and incase 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 aqp?
Top aqp alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "aqp alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/aqp for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to incase?
Top incase alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "incase alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/incase for the full list with editorial commentary on each.