tidytlg
A tables-listings-graphs package that reached CRAN and then went quiet.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of fabletools and hoardr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
The tidyverts forecasting core rebuilt model combination on full residual covariance.
fabletools is the framework layer under fable and fpp3 — mables, fables, accuracy measures, reconciliation, and the model arithmetic that lets forecasters express ensembles as expressions. Version 0.8.0 reworked that arithmetic: combination now uses a joint N-way convolution accounting for the full residual covariance across components rather than composing pairwise, and every arithmetic operator collapses to a single model_combination with correctly implied weights, so nested expressions like ((m1 + m2)/2 + m3)/2 flatten automatically. In parallel, the package has been shedding graphics to {ggtime} on a deliberately slow deprecation clock.
A cache-directory helper that has shipped nothing but CRAN-triggered patches for seven years.
hoardr manages local cache directories for other R packages — where files go, how they are keyed, whether they exist. It underpins caching in several rOpenSci data clients. The last functional additions were in 2018; everything since is a patch issued because CRAN reported a test failure or the maintainer changed.
fabletools is the framework layer under fable and fpp3 — mables, fables, accuracy measures, reconciliation, and the model arithmetic that lets forecasters express ensembles as expressions. Version 0.8.0 reworked that arithmetic: combination now uses a joint N-way convolution accounting for the full residual covariance across components rather than composing pairwise, and every arithmetic operator collapses to a single model_combination with correctly implied weights, so nested expressions like ((m1 + m2)/2 + m3)/2 flatten automatically. In parallel, the package has been shedding graphics to {ggtime} on a deliberately slow deprecation clock.
The framework is being narrowed and deepened at the same time. Narrowed, because plotting is moving out to a dedicated package over an announced two-year deprecation, leaving fabletools to modeling infrastructure. Deepened, because the recent statistical work targets correctness in places users could not easily inspect — combination weights, inverse-variance weighting computed on response rather than innovation residuals, reconciliation coherency matrices exposed via coherent_smat() and coherent_cmat(). Class hygiene follows the same instinct, with mdl_lst replacing lst_mdl and gaining augment(), glance(), and tidy() so global and reconciliation models report statistics like any other.
With combination and reconciliation infrastructure freshly reworked, the remaining announced work is the ggtime separation, so expect the graphics re-exports to keep degrading toward removal while modeling changes stay incremental.
hoardr manages local cache directories for other R packages — where files go, how they are keyed, whether they exist. It underpins caching in several rOpenSci data clients. The last functional additions were in 2018; everything since is a patch issued because CRAN reported a test failure or the maintainer changed.
This is infrastructure that has reached its final shape. Three of the last three releases were reactive: two responses to CRAN test-failure notifications, one to a maintainer handover. The single behavioural change in that stretch — forward slashes in paths on every operating system — is a consistency fix for downstream packages rather than a feature. Its release cadence is set by CRAN's checks, not by demand.
Expect the next release to be triggered by another CRAN check failure rather than by new functionality, matching every release since 2018.
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 fabletools or hoardr.
A tables-listings-graphs package that reached CRAN and then went quiet.
Tplyr made clinical summary tables explain where every number came from.
Clinical listings that keep inheriting their hardest problem — pagination — from the layer below.
gigs redesigned its whole conversion API for rOpenSci, then spent three releases getting the docs to build.
A weather-data client that keeps rewriting its HTTP layer while slowly tightening its API.
datasetjson rebuilt its object model to track the CDISC Dataset-JSON 1.1 schema.
See all fabletools alternatives → · See all hoardr alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. fabletools and hoardr 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.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. fabletools and hoardr 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.
Top fabletools alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "fabletools alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/fabletools for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top hoardr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "hoardr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/hoardr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.