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Comparison · Infra & APIs
CBTF vs tidyaudit
A side-by-side editorial comparison of CBTF and tidyaudit — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
CBTF vs tidyaudit: at a glance
What is CBTF?
A fuzzer for R packages that grew from one argument at a time to parallel runs across whole namespaces.
CBTF throws deliberately problematic inputs at exported functions and reports which ones error, warn, or survive. It now covers 85 input classes, fuzzes multiple named arguments per call, runs in parallel with a per-function timeout, and reports results as a classed object with print, summary, length, and whitelist methods for pruning false positives. Output control has been refined repeatedly — the latest release adds grouping by input or by function and a summary-only mode.
What is tidyaudit?
Pipeline provenance for tidyverse workflows, recording what changed at each step without keeping the data.
tidyaudit records lightweight metadata snapshots as data flows through a pipeline — row and column counts, NA counts, and structured diffs between any two points — without storing the data itself. Taps are operation-aware, so join, filter, and anti-join steps each report what that operation specifically did, and validation helpers cover join integrity, primary keys, and variable relationships. The trail can now be exported as a self-contained interactive HTML diagram or serialized to JSON or RDS.
CBTF vs tidyaudit: editorial side-by-side
CBTF
0.0INFRA · APIS
A fuzzer for R packages that grew from one argument at a time to parallel runs across whole namespaces.
◆ Current state
CBTF throws deliberately problematic inputs at exported functions and reports which ones error, warn, or survive. It now covers 85 input classes, fuzzes multiple named arguments per call, runs in parallel with a per-function timeout, and reports results as a classed object with print, summary, length, and whitelist methods for pruning false positives. Output control has been refined repeatedly — the latest release adds grouping by input or by function and a summary-only mode.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has moved from a script-shaped tool to a test-suite component. The single-argument, sequential fuzz() of the early releases could not finish a large namespace or survive a function that simply hangs; the mirai rewrite fixed both, and multi-argument support widened what a run can actually reach. Nearly everything since has gone into making results triageable rather than merely produced: whitelisting, result classes, grouping, and terminal output that fits real function signatures. Note that the 0.1.0 through 0.3.0 entries carry backfilled timestamps recorded in reverse order within under a minute, so their published dates do not reflect release order.
◆ Prediction
The steady expansion of the input catalogue from 70 to 85 with a new time class suggests more input classes are the cheapest next win; the reporting surface is now detailed enough that machine-readable output for CI would be the natural follow-on.
tidyaudit
0.0INFRA · APIS
Pipeline provenance for tidyverse workflows, recording what changed at each step without keeping the data.
◆ Current state
tidyaudit records lightweight metadata snapshots as data flows through a pipeline — row and column counts, NA counts, and structured diffs between any two points — without storing the data itself. Taps are operation-aware, so join, filter, and anti-join steps each report what that operation specifically did, and validation helpers cover join integrity, primary keys, and variable relationships. The trail can now be exported as a self-contained interactive HTML diagram or serialized to JSON or RDS.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc is from inspection to artifact. The first release made the trail something you print and read; 0.2.0 made it something you can hand to someone else or feed to another program, with the HTML export deliberately requiring no server and no Shiny. Reporting has been refined in the same direction, with a tabular changes block showing from-and-to values with row, column, and NA deltas. The remaining work in the window is defensive — a factor-handling path rebuilt because R-devel tightened what as.data.frame.table() accepts in row names.
◆ Prediction
With serialization and a standalone export in place, the natural next step is making trails comparable across runs rather than only across steps within one, though nothing in the entries commits to it yet.
Alternatives to CBTF and tidyaudit
Other Infra & APIs 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 CBTF or tidyaudit.
WPML
WPML made machine translation the default, and its point releases keep chasing WordPress and page builders.
forestploter
A forest plot package that keeps handing users control of one more graphical detail.
ggInterval
Interval-valued data plotting, spending 2026 making its function names and examples survive CRAN.
rgm
A microbiome network model that got itself un-archived by deleting the dependency that killed it.
contagionchannels
Three releases in ten days, every one of them a CRAN reviewer's correction rather than a code change.
See all CBTF alternatives → · See all tidyaudit alternatives →
Recent activity from CBTF and tidyaudit
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoCBTFTime inputs added; results groupable by input or function
- 3mo agotidyauditFactor auditing fixed against a stricter R-devel
- 4mo agotidyauditTrails export to standalone HTML and machine-readable formats
- 5mo agotidyauditFirst release: pipeline audit trails for tidyverse ⚡
- 6mo agoCBTFParallel fuzzing with timeouts, and multi-argument support ⚡
- 0y agoCBTFWhitelisting for false positives, plus clearer result semantics
- 1y agoCBTFFunction discovery skips unfuzzable functions; failures no longer crash
- 1y agoCBTFFirst release; notes carry only a website link
- 1y agoCBTFRaw results returned as an object with summary and print methods
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between CBTF and tidyaudit?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Infra & APIs. CBTF and tidyaudit 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 CBTF better than tidyaudit?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. CBTF and tidyaudit 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to CBTF?
Top CBTF alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "CBTF alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/caught-by-the-fuzz for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to tidyaudit?
Top tidyaudit alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "tidyaudit alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tidyaudit for the full list with editorial commentary on each.