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Comparison · Infra & APIs
checkhelper vs fastpos
A side-by-side editorial comparison of checkhelper and fastpos — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
checkhelper vs fastpos: at a glance
What is checkhelper?
checkhelper grew from a check wrapper into a CRAN pre-submission auditor.
1.0.0 added a whole audit_* family — audit_downloads(), audit_description(), audit_dontrun() and audit_citation() — each parsing package source statically and returning a tibble of hits paired with a suggested fix. The package is now defending that position: 1.0.1 rc1 is a submission candidate answering a CRAN archival notice, after roxygen2 8.x moved DESCRIPTION's RoxygenNote field and broke a find_missing_tags() test fixture.
What is fastpos?
Dormant three years, then a two-line release nobody using it would notice
fastpos finds the critical point of stability for a Pearson correlation, a simulation problem whose C++ implementation is the entire reason the package exists. Its substantive work concluded in 2022 with 0.5.0, the release prepared during R Journal review, which renamed the precision parameters, moved multicore work to pbapply and let users set corridor limits directly. After three years of silence, 0.6.0 removes an internal restriction to cpp11 and changes index_pop to an integer.
checkhelper vs fastpos: editorial side-by-side
checkhelper
2.5INFRA · APIS
checkhelper grew from a check wrapper into a CRAN pre-submission auditor.
◆ Current state
1.0.0 added a whole audit_* family — audit_downloads(), audit_description(), audit_dontrun() and audit_citation() — each parsing package source statically and returning a tibble of hits paired with a suggested fix. The package is now defending that position: 1.0.1 rc1 is a submission candidate answering a CRAN archival notice, after roxygen2 8.x moved DESCRIPTION's RoxygenNote field and broke a find_missing_tags() test fixture.
◆ Where it's heading
The design commitment is static analysis — AST walks via getParseData(), line-by-line Rd reading, no eval() and no namespace loading — so the tool can report on a package it never runs. That commitment is what made the roxygen2 8.x break survivable: the audit pipeline itself was verified correct under 8.1.0 and only the test scaffolding had to go, now guarded by a dedicated regression test. fix_globals(write = TRUE) is being sanded down in parallel, no longer flattening per-function grouping comments or writing a degenerate empty globalVariables() shell.
◆ Prediction
The immediate move is the 1.0.1 submission itself, clearing the archival notice. Beyond that, each additional CRAN incoming-check rule remains a candidate for another audit_* function; the open question these notes still leave is whether the family ever gets a single combined entry point.
fastpos
0.0INFRA · APIS
Dormant three years, then a two-line release nobody using it would notice
◆ Current state
fastpos finds the critical point of stability for a Pearson correlation, a simulation problem whose C++ implementation is the entire reason the package exists. Its substantive work concluded in 2022 with 0.5.0, the release prepared during R Journal review, which renamed the precision parameters, moved multicore work to pbapply and let users set corridor limits directly. After three years of silence, 0.6.0 removes an internal restriction to cpp11 and changes index_pop to an integer.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a finished piece of research software in low-effort upkeep. The changelog's centre of gravity is the R Journal review process, and once that concluded the package stopped changing. The single release since is toolchain work of the kind that keeps a package compiling rather than anything a user would see.
◆ Prediction
Expect nothing beyond occasional compilation or CRAN-check fixes unless the accompanying paper draws requests for other correlation types or resampling schemes.
Alternatives to checkhelper and fastpos
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 checkhelper or fastpos.
mpactr
mpactr spent two spring releases normalizing case in metadata after users kept tripping on it.
surveytidy
surveytidy taught every dplyr verb to operate on a whole collection of surveys at once.
surveycore
surveycore declared its API stable with every survey design type covered.
PEIMAN2
PEIMAN2 cut its annotation database loose from its release cycle without breaking CRAN.
prospectr
prospectr spent its biggest release in years fixing spectra it had been quietly mangling.
See all checkhelper alternatives → · See all fastpos alternatives →
Recent activity from checkhelper and fastpos
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agocheckhelpercheckhelper 1.0.1 rc1 (CRAN submission candidate)
- 3mo agocheckhelperA static audit_* family for CRAN pre-submission checks ⚡
- 10mo agofastposcpp11 restriction removed; index_pop now an integer
- 2y agocheckhelperTest fixes for roxygen2 changes
- 3y agocheckhelpercheckhelper 0.1.0 - First CRAN Release
- 4y agofastposMulticore fix for pbmcapply; Windows limited to one core
- 4y agofastposR Journal review release: renamed precision parameters, manual corridor limits
- 5y agofastposMore informative test failures; interactive-only progress bars
- 6y agofastposMulticore support via the future package
- 6y agofastposExact-rho population generation and C++ progress bar fixes
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between checkhelper and fastpos?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. checkhelper is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is checkhelper better than fastpos?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. checkhelper is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to checkhelper?
Top checkhelper alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "checkhelper alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/checkhelper for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to fastpos?
Top fastpos alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "fastpos alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fastpos for the full list with editorial commentary on each.