simlandr
Potential landscape tooling settling onto standard R generics after two rounds of renaming.
Comparison · Analytics
delaporte vs rtrek
A side-by-side editorial comparison of delaporte and rtrek — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
delaporte vs rtrek: at a glance
What is delaporte?
A Fortran-backed Delaporte distribution package where every release is compiler and CRAN weather.
Delaporte supplies the density, distribution, quantile and random-generation functions for the Delaporte distribution — a Poisson-negative-binomial convolution used for overdispersed count data — implemented in Fortran and called through C. The only user-facing addition in the visible history is explicit OpenMP thread control via getDelapThreads() and setDelapThreads() at 8.2.0.
What is rtrek?
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
rtrek bundles Star Trek datasets — book series, timelines, episode transcripts, species and homeworlds, map tile sets — and layers live retrieval on top through memory_alpha() and memory_beta() plus their ma_* and mb_* helpers. Recent releases are almost entirely repairs to that retrieval layer as the source wikis change their page structure.
delaporte vs rtrek: editorial side-by-side
delaporte
0.0ANALYTICS
A Fortran-backed Delaporte distribution package where every release is compiler and CRAN weather.
◆ Current state
Delaporte supplies the density, distribution, quantile and random-generation functions for the Delaporte distribution — a Poisson-negative-binomial convolution used for overdispersed count data — implemented in Fortran and called through C. The only user-facing addition in the visible history is explicit OpenMP thread control via getDelapThreads() and setDelapThreads() at 8.2.0.
◆ Where it's heading
The maintenance burden here is portability, not statistics. Recent entries track a Fortran suffix change for Intel compiler compatibility, architecture-specific test tolerances, type-safety corrections on values crossing the C-to-Fortran boundary, and a thread-count variable relocated from R options to an environment variable to follow an upstream R commit. The distribution functions themselves are settled; what changes is how the compiled code is built and checked across CRAN's platform matrix.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to follow another CRAN toolchain or Writing R Extensions policy change, as the last several have. Two of the four visible entries carry no notes at all, so this feed will keep understating what actually shipped.
rtrek
0.0ANALYTICS
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
◆ Current state
rtrek bundles Star Trek datasets — book series, timelines, episode transcripts, species and homeworlds, map tile sets — and layers live retrieval on top through memory_alpha() and memory_beta() plus their ma_* and mb_* helpers. Recent releases are almost entirely repairs to that retrieval layer as the source wikis change their page structure.
◆ Where it's heading
The package's centre of gravity shifted once, at 0.2.0, from shipping static data to querying Memory Alpha and Memory Beta at runtime. Everything since has been the maintenance bill for that decision: HTML update fixes, parser improvements, portal retrieval bugs. Note that version numbers on this feed do not track time — 0.2.5 is stamped a year before 0.1.0, and three tags were backfilled within four minutes in November 2020 — so neither rank nor version ordering here indicates release sequence.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to fix retrieval against another Memory Alpha layout change, which is what the last four have done. The entries give no indication of new datasets or functions in progress.
Alternatives to delaporte and rtrek
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 delaporte or rtrek.
lavaanExtra
SEM reporting helpers converging on APA output, one CRAN resubmission at a time.
ibis.iSDM
A raster-to-terra migration is the only readable change in a feed of merge notes.
anyflights
A nycflights13 generator whose recent work is all about the data being right.
vinereg
Conditional density and log-likelihood fill out a vine copula regression package.
stringx
A drop-in string API for base R, kept alive by upstream check failures.
See all delaporte alternatives → · See all rtrek alternatives →
Recent activity from delaporte and rtrek
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1y agodelaporteThread limit moves to an environment variable; Fortran type checks tightened
- 1y agortrekMemory Alpha series portal retrieval fix
- 1y agortrekrtrek 0.5.1 release
- 2y agortrekParser improvements for wiki retrieval
- 2y agortrekDead external content and data dependencies removed
- 3y agodelaporteExplicit OpenMP thread control functions added
- 3y agodelaporteCRAN release 8.1.1
- 3y agodelaporteCRAN release 8.1.0
- 5y agortrekFixes for source website HTML changes
- 5y agortrekMemory Alpha and Memory Beta web APIs added ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between delaporte and rtrek?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. delaporte and rtrek 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 delaporte better than rtrek?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. delaporte and rtrek 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 delaporte?
Top delaporte alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "delaporte alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/delaporte for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to rtrek?
Top rtrek alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rtrek alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rtrek for the full list with editorial commentary on each.