pins
pins keeps adding a storage backend per release while retiring its original API
Comparison · Analytics
dials vs leaflet
A side-by-side editorial comparison of dials and leaflet — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
dials vs leaflet: at a glance
What is dials?
dials is quietly registering the tuning parameters for tidymodels' deep-learning push
dials defines the parameter objects and grid constructors that tidymodels tunes over, which makes its release notes a reliable early read on what the rest of the stack is about to support. The last two releases are dominated by attention-model parameters — SAINT and tabular deep learning via brulee, TabPFN via parsnip's tab_pfn() — alongside catboost parameters for bonsai and calibration parameters for tailor.
What is leaflet?
leaflet relicensed to MIT and finished migrating off R's retired spatial stack
leaflet is the R binding for the Leaflet mapping library. Its recent releases are dominated by one long migration: away from sp, rgdal, rgeos and raster, and toward sf and terra. Version 2.2.3 completed the user-facing half of that - sp is no longer installed by default, and bundled datasets ship as sf objects - while also relicensing the package from GPL-2 to MIT.
dials vs leaflet: editorial side-by-side
dials
0.0ANALYTICS
dials is quietly registering the tuning parameters for tidymodels' deep-learning push
◆ Current state
dials defines the parameter objects and grid constructors that tidymodels tunes over, which makes its release notes a reliable early read on what the rest of the stack is about to support. The last two releases are dominated by attention-model parameters — SAINT and tabular deep learning via brulee, TabPFN via parsnip's tab_pfn() — alongside catboost parameters for bonsai and calibration parameters for tailor.
◆ Where it's heading
The grid machinery itself is settled: grid_space_filling() consolidated the older designs, and the grid_*() functions now error rather than warn on the wrong size argument. What keeps moving is the parameter catalog, and it is moving toward neural and foundation-model territory that tidymodels historically left alone. Error-message quality is a steady secondary theme.
◆ Prediction
Expect further parameter objects to land ahead of the parsnip and brulee releases that use them — the attention and tabular-foundation-model work in flight is the clearest thing the entries point to.
leaflet
0.0ANALYTICS
leaflet relicensed to MIT and finished migrating off R's retired spatial stack
◆ Current state
leaflet is the R binding for the Leaflet mapping library. Its recent releases are dominated by one long migration: away from sp, rgdal, rgeos and raster, and toward sf and terra. Version 2.2.3 completed the user-facing half of that - sp is no longer installed by default, and bundled datasets ship as sf objects - while also relicensing the package from GPL-2 to MIT.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a package being brought into line with an ecosystem that changed underneath it. The retirement of rgdal and rgeos forced the terra and sf work; the license change and dependency reductions are the maintainers taking the opportunity to clean up while they are already in there. Feature work, such as the full viridisLite palette set, arrives as a side effect of the tidying.
◆ Prediction
With the sp path now opt-in and the retired geospatial dependencies gone, expect the remaining work to be small: palette and provider-tile handling, and keeping the bundled JavaScript current.
Alternatives to dials and leaflet
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 dials or leaflet.
tsibble
tsibble shipped one release in five and a half years - the data structure is finished
yardstick
yardstick made fairness metrics a first-class part of tidymodels evaluation
tune
tune extends tuning past the model itself to postprocessors, and adds a second parallel backend
ggpubr
ggpubr reached 1.0.0 with p-value formatting presets for specific journals
bigrquery
bigrquery went MIT, then handed its slowest path to the BigQuery Storage API
See all dials alternatives → · See all leaflet alternatives →
Recent activity from dials and leaflet
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agodialsAttention and tabular deep-learning parameters for brulee models
- 4mo agodialsParameters for ordinal_reg() and the tab_pfn() foundation model
- 11mo agoleafletMIT relicensing and sp dropped from default installs ⚡
- 11mo agodialsprop_terms() for supervised feature selection recipes
- 1y agodialsCalibration method parameters for classification and regression
- 1y agodialsPostprocessing parameters added; grid size mismatches now error
- 2y agodialsgrid_space_filling() consolidates the space-filling designs
- 2y agoleafletterra CRS handling fixed; raster images accept layer options
- 2y agoleafletProvider tile dependency is cacheable by knitr again
- 2y agoleafletAdds terra support and removes rgdal and rgeos
- 3y agoleafletUpdates proj4.js and fixes examples to stay on CRAN
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between dials and leaflet?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. dials and leaflet 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 dials better than leaflet?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. dials and leaflet 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 dials?
Top dials alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "dials alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dials for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to leaflet?
Top leaflet alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "leaflet alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/leaflet-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.