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Comparison · Analytics
biocro vs hstats
A side-by-side editorial comparison of biocro and hstats — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
biocro vs hstats: at a glance
What is biocro?
BioCro swapped an unstable iteration for real root finders, changing what its crop models compute.
BioCro is a C++ crop growth simulator with an R interface, built from swappable modules for photosynthesis, respiration and development. Version 3.3.0 added multidimensional and one-dimensional root finders to the C++ source and put them to work immediately, replacing the fixed-point iteration used for intercellular CO2 with a Dekker root finder on the grounds that fixed-point iteration is known to be unstable there. Getting to that release also required moving from C++11 to C++17 and updating the bundled boost from 1.71 to 1.89.
What is hstats?
hstats settled into maintenance after its 1.0 restructuring, with model coverage the only thing still growing.
hstats computes Friedman's H-statistics, partial dependence, ICE curves and permutation importance for any model exposing a prediction function. The releases in view are consolidation: performance work on plain data.frames, ICE facetting for multioutput models, ranger survival support, and a ggplot 4.0 compatibility pass in 2025. The package moved to the ModelOriented organisation in 1.2.0.
biocro vs hstats: editorial side-by-side
biocro
0.0ANALYTICS
BioCro swapped an unstable iteration for real root finders, changing what its crop models compute.
◆ Current state
BioCro is a C++ crop growth simulator with an R interface, built from swappable modules for photosynthesis, respiration and development. Version 3.3.0 added multidimensional and one-dimensional root finders to the C++ source and put them to work immediately, replacing the fixed-point iteration used for intercellular CO2 with a Dekker root finder on the grounds that fixed-point iteration is known to be unstable there. Getting to that release also required moving from C++11 to C++17 and updating the bundled boost from 1.71 to 1.89.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run together: the biology is being broken into finer interchangeable modules — separate maintenance respiration, alternative linear and logistic SLA methods, a direct development-index module — while the numerics underneath are being made solvable in general. The root finders are explicitly staged to move into the shared biocro/framework repository, so this is groundwork for other models rather than for this package alone.
◆ Prediction
More module-level alternatives that depend on simultaneous-equation solutions are the natural follow-on, and the root finders should migrate out to biocro/framework as the notes state.
hstats
0.0ANALYTICS
hstats settled into maintenance after its 1.0 restructuring, with model coverage the only thing still growing.
◆ Current state
hstats computes Friedman's H-statistics, partial dependence, ICE curves and permutation importance for any model exposing a prediction function. The releases in view are consolidation: performance work on plain data.frames, ICE facetting for multioutput models, ranger survival support, and a ggplot 4.0 compatibility pass in 2025. The package moved to the ModelOriented organisation in 1.2.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The structural work — the hstats_matrix object, quantile approximation, revised plotting — landed in 1.0.0 just outside this window, and nothing since has changed the package's shape. What continues is model-coverage plumbing: mlr3 classification modes, ranger survival behind a survival argument, and factor predictions added in 1.1.0 then removed again in 1.2.0. The most recent releases are compatibility-driven, tracking ggplot2 rather than the interaction statistics.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to be another dependency-compatibility pass or a new model backend working out of the box, rather than new interaction statistics.
Alternatives to biocro and hstats
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 biocro or hstats.
epikit
epikit narrows to field-epidemiology helpers, handing proportions to a sibling package
SimInf
SimInf 10.0 turns an epidemic simulator into a tool that fits models to real time series
mutagen
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
broman
A statistician's personal toolbox, growing one plotting utility at a time
qtl
R/qtl is in pure custodial mode: every recent release answers a compiler, not a user
See all biocro alternatives → · See all hstats alternatives →
Recent activity from biocro and hstats
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6mo agobiocroCompiler warning blocking Linux builds fixed
- 8mo agobiocroC++ root finders added; Ci calculation moved off fixed-point iteration ⚡
- 10mo agohstatsggplot 4.0 compatibility and test coverage
- 1y agobiocroMaintenance respiration module; SLA split into swappable methods
- 1y agohstatsranger survival models supported out of the box
- 2y agohstatsMoves to ModelOriented; factor predictions removed
- 2y agobiocroFirst CRAN-accepted release after a 20 MB to 5 MB cut
- 2y agobiocroDESCRIPTION date refreshed for CRAN submission
- 2y agobiocroCI workflow debugging tag, not a release
- 2y agohstatsICE facets for multioutput models; mlr3 fixes
- 2y agohstatsFaster data.frame paths; NaN H-statistics fixed
- 2y agohstatsFactor predictions and line-style 2D partial dependence
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between biocro and hstats?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. biocro and hstats 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 biocro better than hstats?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. biocro and hstats 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 biocro?
Top biocro alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "biocro alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/biocro-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to hstats?
Top hstats alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "hstats alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/hstats for the full list with editorial commentary on each.