EvoPhylo
EvoPhylo added BEAST2 alongside MrBayes, then went quiet for two years.
Comparison · Analytics
epiflows vs GDPuc
A side-by-side editorial comparison of epiflows and GDPuc — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
epiflows vs GDPuc: at a glance
What is epiflows?
epiflows has shipped four releases in eight years, none of which changed the code.
epiflows predicts the spread of infectious disease along population flows between locations, and it is effectively dormant. The whole visible history spans 2018 to 2026 in four entries: the first CRAN release, a Zenodo archival tag, a Roxygen patch whose notes state the functionality is unchanged, and a 2026 release replacing deprecated ggplot2 and tibble calls. No entry describes new epidemiological capability.
What is GDPuc?
A GDP unit converter that keeps widening which currencies and deflators it will accept
GDPuc converts GDP figures between currencies, base years and price bases, using World Bank conversion factors, and is used as a dependency inside the madrat/magclass modelling stack. The 1.6.x line introduced xCU as a unit — local currency of any country x — added arguments for non-default iso3c and year columns, and made the package work with madrat caching and region mappings. The most recent release fixes a bug in iso3c column selection.
epiflows vs GDPuc: editorial side-by-side
epiflows
0.0ANALYTICS
epiflows has shipped four releases in eight years, none of which changed the code.
◆ Current state
epiflows predicts the spread of infectious disease along population flows between locations, and it is effectively dormant. The whole visible history spans 2018 to 2026 in four entries: the first CRAN release, a Zenodo archival tag, a Roxygen patch whose notes state the functionality is unchanged, and a 2026 release replacing deprecated ggplot2 and tibble calls. No entry describes new epidemiological capability.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being kept installable rather than developed. The one recent release is dependency maintenance contributed from outside, which is the pattern for RECON-era epidemiology packages that have outlived their original project funding. Two separate entries are both labelled version 0.2.1, so even the version history is not a reliable guide to what changed.
◆ Prediction
Any further releases will most likely be more deprecation cleanup to keep the package on CRAN; there is nothing in the record suggesting active development has resumed.
GDPuc
0.0ANALYTICS
A GDP unit converter that keeps widening which currencies and deflators it will accept
◆ Current state
GDPuc converts GDP figures between currencies, base years and price bases, using World Bank conversion factors, and is used as a dependency inside the madrat/magclass modelling stack. The 1.6.x line introduced xCU as a unit — local currency of any country x — added arguments for non-default iso3c and year columns, and made the package work with madrat caching and region mappings. The most recent release fixes a bug in iso3c column selection.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is toward accepting messier inputs from more callers. Successive releases have relaxed assumptions the package originally made — that a year column exists, that column names follow a convention, that PPP data is available for every country — and each relaxation is driven by an integration rather than by an economics question. The one genuinely methodological addition is the CPI as an alternative deflator, which arrived in 1.0.0.
◆ Prediction
Conversion factors are versioned World Bank data and were last refreshed in 1.0.0, so a data update is the most likely content of the next substantive release, alongside continued fixes to the column-detection logic that has now produced bugs twice.
Alternatives to epiflows and GDPuc
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 epiflows or GDPuc.
treespace
treespace ships once every year or two, and only when CRAN or a user forces it.
Rpath
Rpath 1.1.0 learns to read Ecopath's own files, easing migration off the desktop tool.
TAF
TAF keeps turning ICES stock assessments into reproducible, dependency-pinned projects.
parallelDist
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
cairo
Cairo finally catches R's graphics engine, all the way to GE API 16.
See all epiflows alternatives → · See all GDPuc alternatives →
Recent activity from epiflows and GDPuc
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 5mo agoepiflowsDeprecated ggplot2 and tibble calls replaced
- 8mo agoGDPucFix iso3c column selection
- 8mo agoGDPucxCU unit introduced; madrat caching and region mappings supported
- 1y agoGDPucBetter column detection; magclass objects without years accepted
- 2y agoGDPucCPI added as an alternative deflator; constant euro conversion
- 3y agoGDPucSuggests field cleaned for CRAN compliance
- 3y agoGDPucCorrect conversion factors returned by return_cfs
- 3y agoepiflowsRoxygen patch for CRAN checks
- 7y agoepiflowsFirst Zenodo archival tag
- 8y agoepiflowsFirst CRAN release
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between epiflows and GDPuc?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. epiflows and GDPuc 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 epiflows better than GDPuc?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. epiflows and GDPuc 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 epiflows?
Top epiflows alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "epiflows alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/epiflows-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to GDPuc?
Top GDPuc alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "GDPuc alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gdpuc-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.