paleobuddy
paleobuddy can now simulate trait-dependent diversification, not just birth-death.
Comparison · Analytics
GDPuc vs protr
A side-by-side editorial comparison of GDPuc and protr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
GDPuc vs protr: at a glance
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.
What is protr?
protr's feature set is finished; the work now is surviving Bioconductor's churn.
protr generates numerical descriptors from protein sequences for machine learning, plus alignment-based similarity between sequences. The descriptor functions have been stable for years. Recent releases divide cleanly into two kinds: extending the similarity computations to work under memory constraints, and absorbing the Bioconductor split that moved pairwise alignment out of Biostrings into pwalign.
GDPuc vs protr: editorial side-by-side
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 Successive releases have relaxed assumptions the package originally made — that a year column exists, that column names follow a convention, that PPP data is available for every country — and each relaxation is driven by an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.
protr
0.0ANALYTICS
protr's feature set is finished; the work now is surviving Bioconductor's churn.
◆ Current state
protr generates numerical descriptors from protein sequences for machine learning, plus alignment-based similarity between sequences. The descriptor functions have been stable for years. Recent releases divide cleanly into two kinds: extending the similarity computations to work under memory constraints, and absorbing the Bioconductor split that moved pairwise alignment out of Biostrings into pwalign.
◆ Where it's heading
The similarity side is where the remaining engineering goes, and it follows a consistent pattern — whatever parSeqSim() gained, crossSetSim() eventually gets. Batching, verbose progress and a disk-backed variant all arrived for the single-set case first and were mirrored for the cross-set case in 1.7-1. That is a maintainer closing feature-parity gaps rather than opening new directions, and the two most recent releases contain no user-facing change at all.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to react to another Bioconductor or R CMD check change, which accounts for three of the last four. The similarity functions now have parity, so there is no obvious internal backlog left.
Alternatives to GDPuc and protr
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 GDPuc or protr.
geodist
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
errors
errors keeps making uncertainty print the way each scientific field expects.
CMAQ
CMAQ went global in v5.5, and has been patching that surface ever since.
enpls
enpls has not changed its statistics since 2016 — only its website, twice.
grex
grex is a lookup table with a version number — it ships when the annotation moves.
Recent activity from GDPuc and protr
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 8mo agoGDPucFix iso3c column selection
- 8mo agoGDPucxCU unit introduced; madrat caching and region mappings supported
- 11mo agoprotrprotr 1.7-5 silences a Debian r-devel check note
- 1y agoprotrprotr 1.7-4 checks alignment dependencies upfront
- 1y agoGDPucBetter column detection; magclass objects without years accepted
- 1y agoprotrprotr 1.7-3 detects Biostrings version to find pwalign
- 2y agoprotrprotr 1.7-2 fixes citation key and vignette accessibility
- 2y agoprotrprotr 1.7-1 brings crossSetSim to parity with parSeqSim
- 2y agoGDPucCPI added as an alternative deflator; constant euro conversion
- 2y agoprotrprotr 1.7-0 adds crossSetSim for two-set similarity
- 3y agoGDPucSuggests field cleaned for CRAN compliance
- 3y agoGDPucCorrect conversion factors returned by return_cfs
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between GDPuc and protr?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. GDPuc and protr 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 GDPuc better than protr?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. GDPuc and protr 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 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.
What are the best alternatives to protr?
Top protr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "protr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/protr-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.