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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

FlexRL 1.0.1 (release candidate)

  • Bugs fixed.
  • Performance: the Gibbs machinery is ~100x faster end-to-end on the benchmark problem (review/bench-stem.R, nA=10000, nB=15000, n_links=7500, 22 sweeps: 238.7 s -> 2.29 s); on a 100k/150k-record problem (75k links, 22 sweeps) a serial run takes 88 s and threads = 8 brings it to ~51 s. The candidate-pair log-likelihood is now a plain per-pair vector (the nA x nB sparse matrix and data-frame row subsetting are gone), candidate pairs are built by a single C++ call (buildCandidatePairs()), the per-sweep likelihood pieces are computed by one fused C++ pass (pairLogLik()), sampleL samples the joint (H^A, H^B) through an exact O(nval) factorization, and all kernels draw from pre-drawn uniform blocks.
  • Breaking (internal kernels): code calling the samplers directly must be adjusted:
    • sampleD() signature is now (S, LLA, LLB, LLL, gamma, nlinkrec, links, threads). gamma is a single scalar; the linkage state is passed as links, a 0-based k x 2 matrix of (A, B) record pairs (0x2 when nothing is linked), replacing the sumRowD/sumColD arguments — the flags are derived from links and still returned. The return list gains links (the updated 0-based pairs) next to linksQ (1-based rows of S); loglik was dropped from the inputs (the value cancels in every acceptance ratio and is reconstructed internally).
    • simulateD() likewise takes the current linksR and no sumRowD/sumColD; it gains threads and model_dynamics.
    • The global C++ link map — and with it initDeltaMap() and Deltafind() — is gone: a sweep carries no state between calls, everything it needs lives in its arguments.
    • sampleNL() takes a unif argument; sampleL() takes (survivalpSameH, nval, phikA, phikB, eta, unif) and returns the joint (H^A, H^B) matrix.
    • Kernels draw their Uniform(0,1) deviates from pre-drawn blocks consumed by pair position rather than calling the RNG per draw: for a given set.seed() the realised draws differ from <= 1.0.0 (distributions do not).
  • OpenMP: the per-pair likelihood loops in the Gibbs kernels are parallelised; new threads argument on StEM() (default 4; on a build without OpenMP the code runs sequentially regardless). Results are bitwise identical for any thread count. The package still builds — and runs sequentially — on platforms without OpenMP.
  • The built-in survival models (exponential, Weibull, Gompertz, piecewise) evaluate through a fused, parallel C++ kernel (survivalS_cpp) instead of R-level matrix algebra; custom survival functions are unaffected and keep working exactly as before. Values agree with the previous R implementation to ~1e-16 (BLAS rounding); survival_model() objects gain a cuts field.
  • Parity verified against the pre-optimisation implementation and pinned by permanent regression tests: tests/testthat/test-golden-parity.R compares the current kernels to golden fixtures generated from the pre-optimisation build (review/generate-goldens.R, baseline glm-notes @ 4b09088) — likelihoods and candidate-pair sets exactly, StEM seed clouds and the tiny problem’s stationary frequencies at Monte-Carlo level. See review/PARITY-REPORT.md.

FlexRL 1.0.0 (release candidate)

CRAN release: 2026-10-07

  • Functions and arguments renamed, data configuration functions added.
  • New survival_model(): the change over time of a structured PIV can be modelled with an exponential (default), Weibull, Gompertz, piecewise-constant or user-defined survival function, passed to StEM() through the survival_model argument. alpha chains are named after the model parameters. SurvivalUnstable() and loglikSurvival() are obsolete. cond_hazard_params are now given on the parameter scale of the model (log-hazards for the exponential model).
  • New RL_diagnostics(): provides record linkage diagnostics over linkage decision rules (thresholds from 0.50 to 0.99); internally computes FDP_measures and discrepancy_measures useful for downstream inference; print(x, threshold = ) and plot(x, type = ) display the diagnostics,
  • New link_with_<pkg>() record linkage wrappers created for several packages: multilink, fastLink, BRL, reclin2, diyar, fedmatch, FlexRL. They return a named list (idxA, idxB, LinkScore) that can be passed directly to RL_diagnostics().
  • Useless dependencies dropped; R >= 4.1.0.
  • Bugs corrected, warnings added.

FlexRL 0.1.0 (development)

CRAN release: 2024-12-09

  • Package creation. Initial CRAN submission.