tidytlg
A tables-listings-graphs package that reached CRAN and then went quiet.
Comparison · Analytics
Athlytics vs crul
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Athlytics and crul — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:ropensci
Athlytics vs crul: at a glance
What is Athlytics?
A Strava analytics package spent its 1.0 cycle surviving rOpenSci review, not adding features.
Athlytics computes endurance-training metrics — ACWR, EWMA load, efficiency factor, decoupling, personal bests — from Strava exports. Every release in view is review-driven: test-suite consolidation, dataset renames, styler passes, and a substantial robustness pass over the metric calculations and stream parsers. 1.0.6 explicitly changes nothing but packaging metadata.
What is crul?
crul took mocking back from webmockr and made it a property of the client itself
crul is the R6-based HTTP client underneath much of rOpenSci's package stack, covering synchronous requests, three flavours of async, pagination and retries. Its 1.6.0 release in July 2025 changed where test mocking lives: each client — HttpClient, Async, AsyncVaried — now takes a mocking parameter at initialisation or per method, and the standalone mock() function is deprecated. Mocking used to be something webmockr switched on from outside; it is now a setting on the client.
Athlytics vs crul: editorial side-by-side
Athlytics
0.0ANALYTICS
A Strava analytics package spent its 1.0 cycle surviving rOpenSci review, not adding features.
◆ Current state
Athlytics computes endurance-training metrics — ACWR, EWMA load, efficiency factor, decoupling, personal bests — from Strava exports. Every release in view is review-driven: test-suite consolidation, dataset renames, styler passes, and a substantial robustness pass over the metric calculations and stream parsers. 1.0.6 explicitly changes nothing but packaging metadata.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is optimising for credibility rather than surface area. It completed rOpenSci peer review, moved to an offline ZIP export workflow with hardened TCX/GPX parsing, corrected the EWMA half-life mapping, and deliberately softened its ACWR language away from injury-risk claims. Version numbers are also being published out of order, which makes the feed a poor guide to what shipped when.
◆ Prediction
With review complete and packaging metadata frozen for archival, the next substantive release is more likely to extend metric coverage or data sources than to continue polishing; nothing in these entries points to a specific new metric.
crul
0.0ANALYTICS
crul took mocking back from webmockr and made it a property of the client itself
◆ Current state
crul is the R6-based HTTP client underneath much of rOpenSci's package stack, covering synchronous requests, three flavours of async, pagination and retries. Its 1.6.0 release in July 2025 changed where test mocking lives: each client — HttpClient, Async, AsyncVaried — now takes a mocking parameter at initialisation or per method, and the standalone mock() function is deprecated. Mocking used to be something webmockr switched on from outside; it is now a setting on the client.
◆ Where it's heading
The async surface has been the growth area for years — retries reached Async, AsyncVaried, AsyncQueue and HttpRequest in 1.4, AsyncQueue gained the response accessors in 1.2, and 1.5.0 wired async requests up to webmockr. The 1.6.0 change reverses that direction of dependency, and it landed within a minute of webmockr's own release severing its tie to vcr. Read together, the rOpenSci HTTP stack is being deliberately untangled so each package can be used without the others.
◆ Prediction
With mock() deprecated rather than removed, the next major release is the likely point of deletion. Expect the remaining work to follow the same decoupling theme rather than adding request features.
Alternatives to Athlytics and crul
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 Athlytics or crul.
Tplyr
Tplyr made clinical summary tables explain where every number came from.
rlistings
Clinical listings that keep inheriting their hardest problem — pagination — from the layer below.
hoardr
A cache-directory helper that has shipped nothing but CRAN-triggered patches for seven years.
gigs
gigs redesigned its whole conversion API for rOpenSci, then spent three releases getting the docs to build.
riem
A weather-data client that keeps rewriting its HTTP layer while slowly tightening its API.
See all Athlytics alternatives → · See all crul alternatives →
Recent activity from Athlytics and crul
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agoAthlyticsPackaging metadata standardised for archival
- 2mo agoAthlyticsrOpenSci peer review completed; test suite consolidated
- 2mo agoAthlyticsACWR and stream parsing corrected for real-world exports
- 6mo agoAthlyticsv1.0.2: Documentation & Review Fixes
- 1y agocrulMocking becomes a client parameter, independent of webmockr ⚡
- 2y agocrulAsync requests become mockable through webmockr
- 2y agocrulDocumentation fixes and test helper tweak
- 3y agocrulHTTP retries reach the async classes
- 3y agocrulClearer error for mismatched urls and disk lengths
- 4y agocrulAsyncQueue gains response accessors; results print as a summary
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Athlytics and crul?
Both compete on the same themes — ropensci — within Analytics. Athlytics and crul 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 Athlytics better than crul?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Athlytics and crul 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 Athlytics?
Top Athlytics alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Athlytics alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/athlytics for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to crul?
Top crul alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "crul alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/crul for the full list with editorial commentary on each.