q2
Ten releases in six days, methodically porting Quarto's surface into a Rust binary.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
crane vs evaluate
A side-by-side editorial comparison of crane and evaluate — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
crane vs evaluate: at a glance
What is crane?
Crane is turning into the table-and-plot layer for Roche's clinical output stack.
Crane publishes release candidates rather than finals, and the whole of 0.3.2 is carried by a single rc2 body — its two sibling tags are one-line styling commits, one of them tagged with an unsubstituted vX.Y.Z placeholder. The rc2 notes run to dozens of additions across regression tables, line plots and hierarchical rate tables.
What is evaluate?
The engine under every knitted R document reached 1.0 by making evaluation behave like the console.
evaluate captures the output, plots, messages and conditions produced by running R code, and it is the layer knitr and R Markdown sit on. The 1.0.0 release changed core semantics — multi-expression input now stops at the first error — and gave results a real class. Since then, releases have been graphics-focused: ragg-based capture when available, grid plot fixes, and a patch for ggplot2 4.0.0.
crane vs evaluate: editorial side-by-side
crane
0.0INFRA · APIS
Crane is turning into the table-and-plot layer for Roche's clinical output stack.
◆ Current state
Crane publishes release candidates rather than finals, and the whole of 0.3.2 is carried by a single rc2 body — its two sibling tags are one-line styling commits, one of them tagged with an unsubstituted vX.Y.Z placeholder. The rc2 notes run to dozens of additions across regression tables, line plots and hierarchical rate tables.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is moving from plotting helpers to a full analysis-output layer: mixed models for repeated measures, pairwise Cox results, risk-management-plan tables and adverse-event incidence rates all arrive in one cycle, and the annotation machinery underneath was rebuilt for reliable table-to-axis alignment. Defaults are being pulled toward SAS and rtables output — the log-rank test now uses survival::survdiff instead of coin, and survfit confidence intervals default to plain rather than log.
◆ Prediction
Expect a 0.3.2 final close behind rc2, and the deprecated g_lineplot() family to be removed once gg_lineplot() and annotate_gg() have settled.
evaluate
0.0INFRA · APIS
The engine under every knitted R document reached 1.0 by making evaluation behave like the console.
◆ Current state
evaluate captures the output, plots, messages and conditions produced by running R code, and it is the layer knitr and R Markdown sit on. The 1.0.0 release changed core semantics — multi-expression input now stops at the first error — and gave results a real class. Since then, releases have been graphics-focused: ragg-based capture when available, grid plot fixes, and a patch for ggplot2 4.0.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being tightened rather than expanded. 1.0.0 removed complexity it could not justify, deprecated include_timing, dropped a function testing for an object it never created, and aligned error behaviour with the console; 1.0.4 then moved plot capture toward a faster, more capable device. The recurring theme is reliability of output capture across environments, which is exactly what a document-rendering substrate needs and what local_reproducible_output() exists to enforce.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued fast-follow patches keyed to graphics-stack releases — ggplot2 and ragg in particular — rather than new API surface.
Alternatives to crane and evaluate
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 crane or evaluate.
pkgcache
The metadata cache under pak now speaks to authenticated and corporate repositories.
packrat
R's old dependency manager now runs on a vendored copy of its own successor.
webfakes
A fake web server for tests that keeps closing the gap with the real thing.
pool
Hit 1.0, relicensed to MIT, and has shipped almost nothing but dbplyr compatibility since.
carrier
carrier's 0.3.0 quietly rewrites how crated functions see each other — and breaks code that relied on the old rules.
See all crane alternatives → · See all evaluate alternatives →
Recent activity from crane and evaluate
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agocraneMMRM, Cox and incidence-rate tables land in one release ⚡
- 2mo agocraneExample styling and runtime cleanup
- 2mo agocranePlaceholder release tag from the same styling commit
- 11mo agoevaluatePatch for ggplot2 4.0.0 support
- 1y agoevaluatePlot capture moves to ragg when available
- 1y agoevaluateFix for rlang::abort() inside evaluate()
- 1y agoevaluate1.0 stops at the first error and gives results a class ⚡
- 2y agoevaluateSource handler gains access to the parsed call
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between crane and evaluate?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. crane and evaluate 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 crane better than evaluate?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. crane and evaluate 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 crane?
Top crane alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "crane alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/crane for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to evaluate?
Top evaluate alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "evaluate alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/evaluate for the full list with editorial commentary on each.