EvoPhylo
EvoPhylo added BEAST2 alongside MrBayes, then went quiet for two years.
Comparison · Analytics
mutagen vs survminer
A side-by-side editorial comparison of mutagen and survminer — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
mutagen vs survminer: at a glance
What is mutagen?
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
mutagen provides row-wise column-generation helpers for R data frames in the spirit of Stata's egen — gen_rowmean(), gen_rowsum(), gen_rowsd(), gen_rownonmiss() and about a dozen siblings. It reached 0.5.0 within three months of its first release, adding two or three functions each time. The most recent release adds gen_coldiff() and renames two functions to fit the naming scheme.
What is survminer?
survminer is back after a five-year gap, and spending it cutting dependencies loose.
survminer draws Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox diagnostics on top of ggplot2, and it sits under a large share of published survival figures. After a long dormancy it has shipped three releases since late 2024, and all of them are about staying compatible: with ggplot2 3.5, then 4.0, and now without survMisc, whose weighted log-rank tests are computed internally in base R as of 0.5.2. The plotting API itself has not changed.
mutagen vs survminer: editorial side-by-side
mutagen
0.0ANALYTICS
A young package porting Stata's egen row-wise helpers to the tidyverse, one function per release
◆ Current state
mutagen provides row-wise column-generation helpers for R data frames in the spirit of Stata's egen — gen_rowmean(), gen_rowsum(), gen_rowsd(), gen_rownonmiss() and about a dozen siblings. It reached 0.5.0 within three months of its first release, adding two or three functions each time. The most recent release adds gen_coldiff() and renames two functions to fit the naming scheme.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is filling out a known surface rather than discovering one: the reference implementation exists in Stata, so development is a matter of working through the list. Alongside that, the naming convention is still settling — gen_rowmatch became gen_rowany, gen_percent became gen_colpercent, gen_na_listcol became gen_listcol_na — which is normal for a pre-1.0 package but means callers should expect further renames. Contributions are arriving from several first-time contributors.
◆ Prediction
The gen_col* prefix has only two members against a dozen gen_row* functions, so column-wise coverage is the obvious gap; expect it to fill before the naming stabilises for a 1.0.
survminer
0.0ANALYTICS
survminer is back after a five-year gap, and spending it cutting dependencies loose.
◆ Current state
survminer draws Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox diagnostics on top of ggplot2, and it sits under a large share of published survival figures. After a long dormancy it has shipped three releases since late 2024, and all of them are about staying compatible: with ggplot2 3.5, then 4.0, and now without survMisc, whose weighted log-rank tests are computed internally in base R as of 0.5.2. The plotting API itself has not changed.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a revival by maintenance, not by feature work — the same pattern as its sibling packages from the same author. The dependency surface is being reduced rather than extended, and each release absorbs a breaking change from ggplot2 that would otherwise leave existing scripts producing errors or misaligned risk tables. Compatibility fixes now arrive within months of the upstream change rather than years.
◆ Prediction
Continued ggplot2 4.x tracking is the most likely next release content, since 0.5.2 already carries fixes for 4.0.x aesthetics and the GeomConfint stairstep problem.
Alternatives to mutagen and survminer
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 mutagen or survminer.
treespace
treespace ships once every year or two, and only when CRAN or a user forces it.
Rpath
Rpath 1.1.0 learns to read Ecopath's own files, easing migration off the desktop tool.
TAF
TAF keeps turning ICES stock assessments into reproducible, dependency-pinned projects.
parallelDist
parallelDist is in pure preservation mode — one build fix every few years.
cairo
Cairo finally catches R's graphics engine, all the way to GE API 16.
See all mutagen alternatives → · See all survminer alternatives →
Recent activity from mutagen and survminer
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 5mo agosurvminersurvMisc dependency removed; weighted log-rank tests moved in-house
- 8mo agomutagengen_coldiff() added; two functions renamed for consistency
- 9mo agomutagengen_rowsum() and gen_rowsd() added
- 9mo agomutagengen_rownonmiss() and gen_rowall() added
- 9mo agomutagenRow mean, median and missingness helpers; gen_rowmatch renamed
- 11mo agomutagenFirst release with the row-wise gen_* family
- 11mo agosurvminerRisk-table misalignment fixed via dynamic panel detection
- 1y agosurvminerggcoxzph() sd scaling corrected; tidyverse deprecations cleared
- 5y agosurvminerGehan-Breslow p-value corrected for log.rank.weights = n
- 6y agosurvminerbroom 0.7.0 compatibility fix in ggforest()
- 6y agosurvminersurv_adjustedcurves() separates computation from plotting
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between mutagen and survminer?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. mutagen and survminer 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 mutagen better than survminer?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. mutagen and survminer 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 mutagen?
Top mutagen alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "mutagen alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/mutagen-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to survminer?
Top survminer alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "survminer alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/survminer for the full list with editorial commentary on each.