mlr3proba
mlr3proba is shedding weight as its survival work moves into sibling packages
A side-by-side editorial comparison of mlr3filters and textrecipes — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
mlr3filters grows one feature-selection filter at a time
mlr3filters provides feature-filter methods to mlr3. Its releases follow a consistent shape: one or two new filters, broader feature-type support on existing ones, and error-message work. Boruta and a univariate Cox filter arrived in 0.8.0; 0.9.0 extended Boruta to logical, factor and ordered features and moved param_set to an active binding.
Text features finally stay sparse all the way to the model.
textrecipes supplies the recipes steps for turning text into model-ready columns: tokenizing, hashing, term frequency, TF-IDF, and word embeddings. Version 1.1.0 added a sparse argument to step_dummy_hash(), step_texthash(), step_tf() and step_tfidf() so they emit sparse vectors. The releases before it are a long consistency pass — keep_original_cols on every step that creates columns, informative errors on name collisions, tunable arguments documented, integer rather than double output where integers are what is meant.
mlr3filters provides feature-filter methods to mlr3. Its releases follow a consistent shape: one or two new filters, broader feature-type support on existing ones, and error-message work. Boruta and a univariate Cox filter arrived in 0.8.0; 0.9.0 extended Boruta to logical, factor and ordered features and moved param_set to an active binding.
This is incremental infrastructure that tracks mlr3's own conventions — cli printing, prototype-based dictionaries, featureless learners as defaults — while slowly widening which data types each filter accepts. Nothing in the recent history suggests a change of scope.
Expect another filter or two plus continued feature-type broadening, keeping pace with mlr3 core conventions.
textrecipes supplies the recipes steps for turning text into model-ready columns: tokenizing, hashing, term frequency, TF-IDF, and word embeddings. Version 1.1.0 added a sparse argument to step_dummy_hash(), step_texthash(), step_tf() and step_tfidf() so they emit sparse vectors. The releases before it are a long consistency pass — keep_original_cols on every step that creates columns, informative errors on name collisions, tunable arguments documented, integer rather than double output where integers are what is meant.
Two forces drive this package. One is memory: text produces wide, mostly-zero matrices, and the sparse work is the direct answer, landing in the same period that workflows learned to fit and predict on dgCMatrix input. The other is upstream churn — the tweets tokenizer was deprecated because tokenizers deprecated it, the politeness feature disappeared when textfeatures left Suggests. The package's own agenda is consistency; its release timing belongs to its dependencies.
Expect the sparse argument to spread to the remaining column-producing steps, since only four of them have it, and expect more steps to be reworked as recipes' own sparse-data support matures.
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 mlr3filters or textrecipes.
mlr3proba is shedding weight as its survival work moves into sibling packages
mlr3viz keeps the ecosystem's plots working while the plots themselves move out
mlr3tuning is rebuilding its async machinery under a stable public surface
timetk swallowed anomalize whole, then went quiet for two years
modelbased is turning marginal effects into a full contrast grammar
easystats' parameters package absorbs one more model class every few weeks
See all mlr3filters alternatives → · See all textrecipes alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. mlr3filters and textrecipes 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. mlr3filters and textrecipes 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 mlr3filters alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "mlr3filters alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mlr3filters for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top textrecipes alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "textrecipes alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/textrecipes for the full list with editorial commentary on each.