humind
The MSNI humanitarian needs framework as code, rewritten and re-broken every year
Comparison · Infra & APIs
inlabru vs Skipper
A side-by-side editorial comparison of inlabru and Skipper — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
inlabru vs Skipper: at a glance
What is inlabru?
A Bayesian spatial modelling package rebuilding its foundations one breaking release at a time
inlabru wraps INLA for spatial, point-process and latent-Gaussian models in R. It is mid-modernisation: since 2.12.0 cut the sp stack, each release has renamed part of the public surface, standardised how external packages attach custom mappers, or replaced internal machinery. 2.15.0 is the latest step, pairing a new predictor evaluation and linearisation implementation with broom's tidy(), glance() and augment() methods and four non-zero-truncated observation families.
What is Skipper?
Skipper trims a 4x memory regression out of routesrv, days after shipping h2c
Zalando's HTTP router ships patch tags almost daily, and most carry a single dependency bump or a one-line auth fix. The substance in this window is v0.27.63, which stops routesrv holding an uncompressed route tree alongside the compressed buffer: retained memory in the release's own benchmark falls from 30.7 MB to 2.0 MB, undoing most of the 4x increase zone-aware routing had introduced. Around it sit narrow auth repairs, and an eskip parser change that finally accepts negative numeric arguments in predicates and filters.
inlabru vs Skipper: editorial side-by-side
inlabru
2.5INFRA · APIS
A Bayesian spatial modelling package rebuilding its foundations one breaking release at a time
◆ Current state
inlabru wraps INLA for spatial, point-process and latent-Gaussian models in R. It is mid-modernisation: since 2.12.0 cut the sp stack, each release has renamed part of the public surface, standardised how external packages attach custom mappers, or replaced internal machinery. 2.15.0 is the latest step, pairing a new predictor evaluation and linearisation implementation with broom's tidy(), glance() and augment() methods and four non-zero-truncated observation families.
◆ Where it's heading
The arc is consolidation of the extension surface rather than expansion of the model catalogue. Every release adds mappers or families with one hand and removes a dependency, a re-export or a deprecated path with the other — plyr in 2.15.0, fmesher's Depends entry in 2.14.1, sp and ggmap in 2.12.0. The compatibility flag bru_compat_pre_2_14_enable and the temporary fm_int/fm_pixels re-exports show a maintainer sequencing breaks across releases instead of landing them together.
◆ Prediction
The 2.14 compatibility flag is still defaulting to TRUE and the fmesher re-exports are described in the entries as temporary, so the next obvious move is a release that flips bru_compat_pre_2_14_enable off and drops those re-exports.
Skipper
5.0INFRA · APIS
Skipper trims a 4x memory regression out of routesrv, days after shipping h2c
◆ Current state
Zalando's HTTP router ships patch tags almost daily, and most carry a single dependency bump or a one-line auth fix. The substance in this window is v0.27.63, which stops routesrv holding an uncompressed route tree alongside the compressed buffer: retained memory in the release's own benchmark falls from 30.7 MB to 2.0 MB, undoing most of the 4x increase zone-aware routing had introduced. Around it sit narrow auth repairs, and an eskip parser change that finally accepts negative numeric arguments in predicates and filters.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads run through the recent tags. The data path keeps getting real work - leastRequests balancing, then h2c end to end in v0.27.57, now the memory cost of zone-aware routing being paid back. The auth filters, by contrast, are only being maintained: token introspection, grant auth, and now the OIDC Referer handling are fixes rather than new capability, and several are follow-ups to each other rather than independent bugs.
◆ Prediction
Zone-aware routing looks like the source of the recent memory attention, so expect further tuning around route storage and the hash computation done on every pull, which the release's second benchmark already isolates. The OIDC cookie change is the second link in an auth chain that started with the grant-auth fix, and is likely to draw another follow-up.
Alternatives to inlabru and Skipper
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 inlabru or Skipper.
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See all inlabru alternatives → · See all Skipper alternatives →
Recent activity from inlabru and Skipper
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 21h agoSkipperMove OIDC flow protection from Referer to cookies
- 21h agoSkipperv0.27.63: Store routes compressed-only, decompress on demand (#4198)
- 1d agoSkipperEskip predicates and filters accept negative numbers
- 1d agoSkipperFix token introspection handling
- 1d agoSkipperFix grant auth flow
- 2d agoSkipperUpdate outdated golang.org/x dependencies
- 23d agoinlabruPredictor linearisation rewritten; broom tidiers, truncated families
- 3mo agoinlabruBugfix release: factor contrasts, raster extraction, error classes
- 5mo agoinlabruNew mappers, standardised cgeneric support, bru_obs storage refactor
- 1y agoinlabruMapper classes shortened to bm_*, experimental predictor aggregation
- 1y agoinlabruDrops sp and ggmap for an sf-native spatial stack ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between inlabru and Skipper?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Skipper is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is inlabru better than Skipper?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Skipper is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to inlabru?
Top inlabru alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "inlabru alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/inlabru for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Skipper?
Top Skipper alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Skipper alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/skipper for the full list with editorial commentary on each.