paleobuddy
paleobuddy can now simulate trait-dependent diversification, not just birth-death.
Comparison · Analytics
survminer vs treespace
A side-by-side editorial comparison of survminer and treespace — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
survminer vs treespace: at a glance
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.
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.
survminer vs treespace: editorial side-by-side
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.
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 survminer 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 survminer 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 survminer alternatives → · See all treespace alternatives →
Recent activity from survminer and treespace
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 5mo agosurvminersurvMisc dependency removed; weighted log-rank tests moved in-house
- 11mo agosurvminerRisk-table misalignment fixed via dynamic panel detection
- 11mo agotreespacetreespace patches Rd cross-references for CRAN
- 1y agosurvminerggcoxzph() sd scaling corrected; tidyverse deprecations cleared
- 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 agosurvminerGehan-Breslow p-value corrected for log.rank.weights = n
- 5y agotreespacetreespace corrects tip label handling in transmission distances
- 6y agosurvminerbroom 0.7.0 compatibility fix in ggforest()
- 6y agosurvminersurv_adjustedcurves() separates computation from plotting
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between survminer and treespace?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. survminer 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 survminer better than treespace?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. survminer 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 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.
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.