weird
weird rebuilt itself on distributional objects, and now the anomaly tooling composes with everything else.
Comparison · Analytics
n1qn1c vs vegan
A side-by-side editorial comparison of n1qn1c and vegan — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
n1qn1c vs vegan: at a glance
What is n1qn1c?
A Fortran-descended optimizer got thread-safe, then found two flags that never worked.
n1qn1c is a quasi-Newton optimization routine translated from Fortran to C, used as a solver backend by the nlmixr2 modeling stack rather than called directly by most users. Its two 2026 releases are a concentrated safety pass: global state converted to thread_local, static removed from local variables in the translated code, integer overflow guards added, and memory leaks closed in the R callback wrappers — plus the gcc-asan and valgrind fixes CRAN asked for.
What is vegan?
Community ecology's standard toolkit is retiring the functions a generation of scripts was built on.
vegan is the reference R package for ordination and diversity analysis in community ecology. The 2.7 line redesigned constrained ordination graphics from scratch, made adonis defunct in favor of adonis2, and moved permutation tests for partial RDA and db-RDA onto residualized predictors. The current 2.7-5 release is stabilization — parallel processing on Windows, ggvegan compatibility for tidy scores, and arrow label placement.
n1qn1c vs vegan: editorial side-by-side
n1qn1c
0.0ANALYTICS
A Fortran-descended optimizer got thread-safe, then found two flags that never worked.
◆ Current state
n1qn1c is a quasi-Newton optimization routine translated from Fortran to C, used as a solver backend by the nlmixr2 modeling stack rather than called directly by most users. Its two 2026 releases are a concentrated safety pass: global state converted to thread_local, static removed from local variables in the translated code, integer overflow guards added, and memory leaks closed in the R callback wrappers — plus the gcc-asan and valgrind fixes CRAN asked for.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is being hardened for use inside a parallel modeling framework rather than extended. The audit that produced the thread-safety work also surfaced two plain bugs in features users would have assumed worked: restart = TRUE left the mode at 2 instead of 3 because of a typo, and assign = TRUE referenced the wrong field name so the compressed Hessian was never written to the supplied environment. Earlier work points the same direction — the 6.0.1-12 function-pointer interface exists so nlmixr2est does not need resubmission when this package changes.
◆ Prediction
Expect further memory-safety and sanitizer work rather than algorithmic change; a Fortran-translated numerical core under CRAN's checking regime generates that kind of release indefinitely.
vegan
0.0ANALYTICS
Community ecology's standard toolkit is retiring the functions a generation of scripts was built on.
◆ Current state
vegan is the reference R package for ordination and diversity analysis in community ecology. The 2.7 line redesigned constrained ordination graphics from scratch, made adonis defunct in favor of adonis2, and moved permutation tests for partial RDA and db-RDA onto residualized predictors. The current 2.7-5 release is stabilization — parallel processing on Windows, ggvegan compatibility for tidy scores, and arrow label placement.
◆ Where it's heading
Two long deprecation programs are converging. Plotting is being pushed out of the package: lattice functions are deprecated in favor of ggplot2 equivalents now living in ggvegan, a separate CRAN package, while vegan's own base graphics were rebuilt around independently configurable score types and pipe-based construction. Meanwhile the statistical core is being made internally consistent — add1 and drop1 no longer use different internal models, and summary is no longer an accepted route to ordination scores.
◆ Prediction
Expect the remaining lattice functions to go defunct and more plotting responsibility to shift to ggvegan, leaving vegan as the statistical engine with a thin base graphics layer.
Alternatives to n1qn1c and vegan
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 n1qn1c or vegan.
distributions3
distributions3 changes hands to Achim Zeileis, and a moment calculation bug goes with it.
mizer
After two and a half years dormant, mizer shipped three major versions in seven weeks.
vellumplot
vellumplot tags its first release with a bet most R grammars don't make: the static figure and the widget are the same object.
vellum
vellum's bugs are now found by using it, not testing it — the downstream grammar is doing the QA.
n2kanalysis
n2kanalysis has spent eight years wiring INLA models to an S3 bucket.
See all n1qn1c alternatives → · See all vegan alternatives →
Recent activity from n1qn1c and vegan
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agoveganParallel processing stabilized, especially on Windows
- 4mo agon1qn1crestart and assign flags fixed; sanitizer issues cleared
- 4mo agon1qn1cGlobal state converted to thread_local
- 5mo agoveganLattice plotting deprecated as ggvegan reaches CRAN
- 10mo agoveganPartial RDA permutation tests adopt residualized predictors
- 1y agoveganOrdination graphics rebuilt and adonis made defunct ⚡
- 1y agoveganRelease chasing undefined behavior in a C function
- 1y agon1qn1cFunction-pointer API decouples nlmixr2est releases
- 1y agoveganpca, ca and pco added for unconstrained ordination
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between n1qn1c and vegan?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. n1qn1c and vegan 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 n1qn1c better than vegan?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. n1qn1c and vegan 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 n1qn1c?
Top n1qn1c alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "n1qn1c alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/n1qn1c for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to vegan?
Top vegan alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vegan alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vegan-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.