mrbayes
mrbayes spent 2026 auditing its own Bayesian MR estimators for coding errors.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of spatstat and trias — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
The spatstat umbrella package, now mostly a pointer to the sub-packages doing the work
spatstat is the front package of a family that was split into specialised components — spatstat.geom, spatstat.random, spatstat.model, spatstat.explore, spatstat.univar and spatstat.sparse. Its own release notes reflect that: entries in this window are largely announcements of where the real changes landed, plus documentation and cross-reference maintenance. The codebase it fronts passed 200,000 lines as of 3.5-1.
Belgium's invasive-species indicator toolkit is in steady refinement, one plotting edge case at a time.
trias computes and visualizes indicators for the Belgian Tracking Invasive Alien Species project — emergence detection via GAMs, introduction pathway breakdowns following CBD categories, and native range trends. The recent releases are narrow: GAM plots can now be produced without textual annotation when the model cannot be fitted, and apply_decision_rules() no longer supplies a default for a required argument.
spatstat is the front package of a family that was split into specialised components — spatstat.geom, spatstat.random, spatstat.model, spatstat.explore, spatstat.univar and spatstat.sparse. Its own release notes reflect that: entries in this window are largely announcements of where the real changes landed, plus documentation and cross-reference maintenance. The codebase it fronts passed 200,000 lines as of 3.5-1.
The split is effectively complete and the umbrella's role has settled into coordination — tracking version dependencies across sub-packages and pointing users to them. The family has kept subdividing over this period, with spatstat.univar joining in 3.1-0. The one substantive user-facing addition here is documentation infrastructure: 3.3-0 added the ability to list the history of changes to a specific function, which is a navigational answer to a codebase now spread across many packages.
Expect this package's notes to continue summarising sub-package activity rather than carrying features of its own, since every release in this window does exactly that. Read spatstat.geom, spatstat.random and spatstat.model for the substance.
trias computes and visualizes indicators for the Belgian Tracking Invasive Alien Species project — emergence detection via GAMs, introduction pathway breakdowns following CBD categories, and native range trends. The recent releases are narrow: GAM plots can now be produced without textual annotation when the model cannot be fitted, and apply_decision_rules() no longer supplies a default for a required argument.
Development runs in small, fast patches concentrated on making the indicator functions survive imperfect real-world input — pathways absent from the data, GAMs that will not converge, checklist files with unexpected columns. A second thread trims the package's own surface in favor of the data it ships, deprecating pathways_cbd() in favor of using the pathwayscbd data frame directly, while get_nubkeys() extends reach into GBIF Backbone taxon key resolution.
Expect continued patch-level hardening of the visualization functions and further reliance on GBIF services for taxon resolution, with no sign of a structural change to the indicator set.
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 spatstat or trias.
mrbayes spent 2026 auditing its own Bayesian MR estimators for coding errors.
lineup2 ships once every few years, and 2026's release is a logo and a core-count tweak.
stringi has spent two years on build hardening since its Unicode 15.1 reset.
A 2017 chemometrics method frozen in place, visited only when CRAN changes its documentation rules.
A fast dplyr stand-in that keeps finding new places to skip work entirely.
The ICES stock assessment client took upload away in 2024 and spent two years giving it back.
See all spatstat alternatives → · See all trias alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. spatstat and trias 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. spatstat and trias 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 spatstat alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "spatstat alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/spatstat-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top trias alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "trias alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/trias-r for the full list with editorial commentary on each.