rnaturalearth
rnaturalearth finished its sp exit and is now optimising how the data actually arrives.
Comparison · Analytics
lubridate vs timetk
A side-by-side editorial comparison of lubridate and timetk — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
lubridate vs timetk: at a glance
What is lubridate?
lubridate ships parsing fixes, timezone-data churn, and a long-overdue MIT relicense.
lubridate is R's standard package for date-time manipulation. Recent releases are dominated by parsing correctness — partial datetimes, multiple format strings, month names colliding with the %a format — and by adapting to timezone database changes in R-devel. Version 1.9.5 also relicensed the package to MIT.
What is timetk?
timetk swallowed anomalize whole, then went quiet for two years
timetk handles time series wrangling, visualization, and feature engineering in a tidyverse idiom. Its defining recent move was absorbing the anomalize package outright in 2.9.0, bringing anomaly detection, cleaning, and the associated plots inside timetk rather than leaving them in a sibling package. Development then paused for nearly two years before 2.9.1, a robustness and documentation release.
lubridate vs timetk: editorial side-by-side
lubridate
0.0ANALYTICS
lubridate ships parsing fixes, timezone-data churn, and a long-overdue MIT relicense.
◆ Current state
lubridate is R's standard package for date-time manipulation. Recent releases are dominated by parsing correctness — partial datetimes, multiple format strings, month names colliding with the %a format — and by adapting to timezone database changes in R-devel. Version 1.9.5 also relicensed the package to MIT.
◆ Where it's heading
The feature surface has been stable since 1.9.0 deprecated the roll argument for roll_dst and added integer coercion for Duration, Period and Interval. What continues is a steady stream of parsing edge cases and tzdata churn the package absorbs on its users' behalf, which is most of what a date-time library's maintenance actually is.
◆ Prediction
Expect further releases driven by tzdata and R-devel changes, with parsing fixes arriving as locale and format edge cases get reported.
timetk
0.0ANALYTICS
timetk swallowed anomalize whole, then went quiet for two years
◆ Current state
timetk handles time series wrangling, visualization, and feature engineering in a tidyverse idiom. Its defining recent move was absorbing the anomalize package outright in 2.9.0, bringing anomaly detection, cleaning, and the associated plots inside timetk rather than leaving them in a sibling package. Development then paused for nearly two years before 2.9.1, a robustness and documentation release.
◆ Where it's heading
The trajectory before the pause was consolidation: fold in adjacent functionality, then make the visualization layer handle many series at once via trelliscopejs, then broaden feature generation with tk_tsfeatures(). The recent release works on the least glamorous layer — internal generics so date parsing and sequence generation behave consistently across Date, POSIXct, hms, yearmon, and yearqtr — which is the kind of foundation work a package does when it has accumulated too many special cases. The long gap and the CI-refresh content suggest maintenance attention rather than a new direction.
◆ Prediction
The stated gap is the unimplemented twitter method for anomalize(), which is the one concrete outstanding item the release notes name; beyond that the recent work points to consolidation rather than expansion.
Alternatives to lubridate and timetk
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 lubridate or timetk.
writexl
writexl spent nine years refusing to do formatting, then shipped all of it in 2.0.0.
rgbif
rgbif is steadily pushing users off paged searching and onto real downloads.
rstanarm
rstanarm is community-maintained now, tracking Stan and lme4 rather than adding models.
taxa
taxa started a ground-up rewrite in 2021 and has published almost nothing since.
rotl
rotl's whole release history is keeping name matching honest against a moving taxonomy.
See all lubridate alternatives → · See all timetk alternatives →
Recent activity from lubridate and timetk
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 6mo agolubridatelubridate 1.9.5 relicenses to MIT and fixes timestamp order
- 6mo agolubridatelubridate 1.9.4 parses partial datetimes like as.POSIXct()
- 11mo agotimetktimetk 2.9.1 makes date parsing consistent across time classes
- 2y agotimetktimetk 2.9.0 absorbs the anomalize package ⚡
- 3y agolubridatelubridate 1.9.2 fixes month parsing when %a is present
- 3y agolubridatelubridate 1.9.1 accepts multiple formats in as_datetime()
- 3y agolubridatelubridate 1.9.0 replaces roll with an explicit roll_dst argument
- 4y agotimetktimetk 2.8.1 exposes trelliscope plotting parameters
- 4y agotimetktimetk 2.8.0 adds trelliscopejs support for many-series plots
- 4y agotimetktimetk 2.7.0 adds tk_tsfeatures() for grouped feature matrices
- 4y agotimetktimetk 2.6.2 adds .week_start and facet direction controls
- 5y agolubridatelubridate 1.7.10 fixes interval division across leap years
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between lubridate and timetk?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. lubridate and timetk 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 lubridate better than timetk?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. lubridate and timetk 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 lubridate?
Top lubridate alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "lubridate alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/lubridate for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to timetk?
Top timetk alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "timetk alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/timetk for the full list with editorial commentary on each.