paleobuddy
paleobuddy can now simulate trait-dependent diversification, not just birth-death.
Comparison · Analytics
spanishoddata vs treespace
A side-by-side editorial comparison of spanishoddata and treespace — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
spanishoddata vs treespace: at a glance
What is spanishoddata?
spanishoddata spent a year finding out its 2020-2021 data was quietly incomplete.
spanishoddata provides access to Spain's open mobility origin-destination datasets from the Ministry of Transport, converting them into DuckDB and parquet for analysis at scale. Nearly every release in this window is a data-fidelity fix rather than a feature: district-to-municipal reaggregation was wrong for the 2020-2021 vintage, literal 'NA' strings in the source CSVs broke DuckDB enum casting, and the Amazon S3 metadata bucket turned out to be truncated at March 2021, silently hiding data.
What is treespace?
treespace ships once every year or two, and only when CRAN or a user forces it.
treespace explores and compares sets of phylogenetic and transmission trees, including the tree-distance measures used in outbreak reconstruction. Its release history is entirely reactive: five updates across five years, each triggered by a CRAN policy change, an upstream package removal, or a bug someone reported. The most recent is an Rd cross-reference format patch plus a maintainer email change.
spanishoddata vs treespace: editorial side-by-side
spanishoddata
0.0ANALYTICS
spanishoddata spent a year finding out its 2020-2021 data was quietly incomplete.
◆ Current state
spanishoddata provides access to Spain's open mobility origin-destination datasets from the Ministry of Transport, converting them into DuckDB and parquet for analysis at scale. Nearly every release in this window is a data-fidelity fix rather than a feature: district-to-municipal reaggregation was wrong for the 2020-2021 vintage, literal 'NA' strings in the source CSVs broke DuckDB enum casting, and the Amazon S3 metadata bucket turned out to be truncated at March 2021, silently hiding data.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is in a trust-building phase. The pattern across 0.2.1 through 0.2.6 is the maintainers repeatedly discovering that upstream metadata and the package's own aggregation were misrepresenting what data existed, then fixing it and adding a check so it surfaces next time. That is now backed by infrastructure: comprehensive unit tests plus weekly live-data runs on GitHub workers that alert maintainers when the upstream ministry changes something. The last feature release sits outside the six-entry window, which is itself the story.
◆ Prediction
Expect continued upstream-tracking fixes as the ministry's API and S3 layout shift, with the experimental quick-access and checksum functions the most likely candidates for promotion to stable.
treespace
0.0ANALYTICS
treespace ships once every year or two, and only when CRAN or a user forces it.
◆ Current state
treespace explores and compares sets of phylogenetic and transmission trees, including the tree-distance measures used in outbreak reconstruction. Its release history is entirely reactive: five updates across five years, each triggered by a CRAN policy change, an upstream package removal, or a bug someone reported. The most recent is an Rd cross-reference format patch plus a maintainer email change.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is stable and lightly staffed rather than abandoned — bugs that affect correctness do get fixed, and CRAN deadlines are met. But the 2023 update is the telling one: rather than vendor or replace adephylo when it faced removal, the maintainers disabled two tree-vector methods and marked the loss as hopefully temporary. Two years on, nothing in the feed indicates they came back.
◆ Prediction
The next entry will most likely be another CRAN-compliance patch, on the pattern of four of the last five releases. Whether the Abouheif and sumDD methods ever return is not something these entries give any signal on.
Alternatives to spanishoddata and treespace
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 spanishoddata or treespace.
geodist
geodist stays dependency-free and fast, and warns you when 'cheap' distances stop being honest.
errors
errors keeps making uncertainty print the way each scientific field expects.
CMAQ
CMAQ went global in v5.5, and has been patching that surface ever since.
enpls
enpls has not changed its statistics since 2016 — only its website, twice.
grex
grex is a lookup table with a version number — it ships when the annotation moves.
See all spanishoddata alternatives → · See all treespace alternatives →
Recent activity from spanishoddata and treespace
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agospanishoddataRedirected district files identified in v1 metadata
- 2mo agospanishoddataS3 metadata truncation at March 2021 bypassed via XML feed
- 4mo agospanishoddataLiteral NA strings no longer break DuckDB casting
- 4mo agospanishoddataLarge urban area zones can be reloaded again
- 5mo agospanishoddatatime_slot column removed; test coverage goes live-weekly
- 11mo agotreespacetreespace patches Rd cross-references for CRAN
- 1y agospanishoddataDistrict-to-municipal reaggregation corrected for 2020-2021
- 2y agotreespacetreespace disables Abouheif and sumDD as adephylo exits CRAN
- 3y agotreespacetreespace fixes vignette build on NA tree names
- 5y agotreespacetreespace fixes dist indexing that broke its tests
- 5y agotreespacetreespace corrects tip label handling in transmission distances
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between spanishoddata and treespace?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. spanishoddata and treespace 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 spanishoddata better than treespace?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. spanishoddata and treespace 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 spanishoddata?
Top spanishoddata alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "spanishoddata alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/spanishoddata for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to treespace?
Top treespace alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "treespace alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/treespace-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.