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Comparison · Infra & APIs
forestploter vs lintr
A side-by-side editorial comparison of forestploter and lintr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
forestploter vs lintr: at a glance
What is forestploter?
A forest plot package that keeps handing users control of one more graphical detail.
forestploter draws forest plots where the layout is driven by the data frame itself, so text columns and confidence intervals sit in the same grid. The theme function has become the package's centre of gravity: it now controls graphical parameters for titles, legends, axis, arrow labels, footnotes, and reference lines, with multi-column and row-order legend controls added most recently. Two releases shipped nine minutes apart in April 2026 after a two-year gap, deprecating some theme parameters, removing inter-cell gaps, and improving tick breaks.
What is lintr?
lintr makes the native pipe the default rule and clears out a decade of deprecations
lintr is the static analysis standard for R packages, and its 3.3.0 release does two things at once: it changes pipe_consistency_linter() to require the native pipe, following the Tidyverse Style Guide, and it completes a long deprecation program — six linters fully deprecated, several arguments defunct, and a batch of functions removed outright. The 3.1.x line before it was accuracy work and a maintainer handoff to Michael Chirico.
forestploter vs lintr: editorial side-by-side
forestploter
0.0INFRA · APIS
A forest plot package that keeps handing users control of one more graphical detail.
◆ Current state
forestploter draws forest plots where the layout is driven by the data frame itself, so text columns and confidence intervals sit in the same grid. The theme function has become the package's centre of gravity: it now controls graphical parameters for titles, legends, axis, arrow labels, footnotes, and reference lines, with multi-column and row-order legend controls added most recently. Two releases shipped nine minutes apart in April 2026 after a two-year gap, deprecating some theme parameters, removing inter-cell gaps, and improving tick breaks.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction has been consistent for four years: whatever a user might want to restyle eventually becomes an argument. Point size stopped being transformed, cell height adjustment was removed as unwanted, legends gained size, column, and fill-order control, and vertical lines learned to extend the full plot height and to draw beneath the whiskers. The one structural move was 1.1.0, which let callers supply their own confidence-interval and summary drawing functions — turning a fixed renderer into an extensible one. Everything since has been the arguments that extensibility did not cover.
◆ Prediction
The latest release deprecates theme parameters rather than adding them, which suggests the next one consolidates the theme surface that has grown for four years rather than extending it further.
lintr
0.0INFRA · APIS
lintr makes the native pipe the default rule and clears out a decade of deprecations
◆ Current state
lintr is the static analysis standard for R packages, and its 3.3.0 release does two things at once: it changes pipe_consistency_linter() to require the native pipe, following the Tidyverse Style Guide, and it completes a long deprecation program — six linters fully deprecated, several arguments defunct, and a batch of functions removed outright. The 3.1.x line before it was accuracy work and a maintainer handoff to Michael Chirico.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has been consolidating: overlapping linters renamed and merged, configuration validated up front, and an experimental R-script config offered as a possible replacement for the DCF format. Alongside that, a sustained campaign against false positives and false negatives in individual linters, which is where most contributor effort goes.
◆ Prediction
Expect the six warning-deprecated linters to be removed in the next release as announced, and continued movement on the R-script configuration format if feedback supports it.
Alternatives to forestploter and lintr
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 forestploter or lintr.
WPML
WPML made machine translation the default, and its point releases keep chasing WordPress and page builders.
ggInterval
Interval-valued data plotting, spending 2026 making its function names and examples survive CRAN.
rgm
A microbiome network model that got itself un-archived by deleting the dependency that killed it.
contagionchannels
Three releases in ten days, every one of them a CRAN reviewer's correction rather than a code change.
tidyaudit
Pipeline provenance for tidyverse workflows, recording what changed at each step without keeping the data.
See all forestploter alternatives → · See all lintr alternatives →
Recent activity from forestploter and lintr
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 3mo agoforestploterTheme parameters deprecated; cell gaps removed, ticks improved
- 3mo agoforestploterMulti-column legends and full-height vertical lines
- 8mo agolintrNative pipe required by default; six linters deprecated ⚡
- 2y agoforestploterFull graphical control over titles, legends, axis and footnotes
- 2y agolintrFalse positive and negative fixes; new CRAN maintainer
- 2y agolintrExperimental R-script configs; up-front config validation
- 2y agoforestploterTick digit calculation improved; automatic cell height removed
- 3y agolintrLinter renames for consistency; Super-Linter config discovery
- 3y agoforestploterCustom CI and summary drawing functions; boxplots inside the plot
- 3y agoforestploterArbitrary grobs and math symbols can be placed in cells
- 3y agolintrTest no longer leaves cache files behind
- 3y agolintrfunction_argument_linter() added; seq_linter() covers dplyr and data.table
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between forestploter and lintr?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. forestploter and lintr 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 forestploter better than lintr?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. forestploter and lintr 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 forestploter?
Top forestploter alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "forestploter alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/forestploter for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to lintr?
Top lintr alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "lintr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/lintr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.