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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

freestiler 0.3.0.9000

  • freestile() now accepts category, category_values, and cluster_min_points for a single POINT sf object or GeoDataFrame. Category counts use the same Supercluster engine as file clustering, with individual points above cluster_maxzoom in the same archive. The in-memory path works without GeoParquet or DuckDB support, including in the CRAN build. Existing calls without category options retain their clustering behavior.

freestiler 0.3.0

CRAN release: 2026-10-02

  • MVT output with simplification = FALSE now preserves line positions when a sub-pixel line part disappears during encoding. This affects multipart lines and single lines split by tile clipping. Default simplification and MLT output are unaffected.

  • Requests for native features omitted from the CRAN build now explain how to install from R-Universe, including the platform limits of Rust DuckDB and streaming and the R DuckDB fallback.

  • Native GeoParquet and DuckDB readers preserve DATE and timestamp properties as ISO 8601 text instead of silently replacing them with nulls (#18). Timestamps use a T separator; zoned timestamps are normalized to UTC with a Z suffix, independent of the DuckDB session time zone. Genuine nulls remain null. The R DuckDB fallback uses the same timestamp format; direct freestile() calls on sf objects retain their existing behavior. Formatting zoned query timestamps does not require DuckDB’s ICU extension.

  • Rust DuckDB queries now export geometry only as WKB, fixing failures with CRS-tagged geometry such as ST_Read() shapefiles (#19). CRS-tagged query results are now automatically reprojected to WGS84, including streaming queries. Reprojection preserves longitude/latitude axis order in both the native reader and the R DuckDB fallback used by CRAN builds.

  • Experimental ordered categorical clustering is available through freestile_file() in R and Python (category, category_values, cluster_min_points). It uses the pinned Supercluster 8.0.1/KDBush 4.1.0 port, with 512-tile pixel radius, typed category counts and expansion zoom. This increment requires a POINT GeoParquet file, cluster_maxzoom = max_zoom, and no thinning/coalescing; use a separate dot source above the cutoff. The global index is compact but resident, not out-of-core. Existing noncategorical clustering is unchanged pending the broader API migration. Output is spooled one tile at a time, exact singleton originals live on disk, and FREESTILER_CLUSTER_TILE_BUDGET_MB (default 256) guards decoded tile buffers and the tile-coordinate index. Numeric/string-union abbreviation fields are omitted from TileJSON’s single-type field map.

  • freestile_h3() now supports aggregate-only archives with include_points = FALSE, covering the complete requested zoom range without fetching a raw-point frame. Optional category and category_values add point_count, <category>:<value> counts, an _other count for missing or unlisted values, and modal category/count/share/tie fields. Ties have no selected category. R and Python share these semantics. All finalized hex layers are still held in memory; bounded polygon output is separate work.

  • H3 integer aggregates are checked before host conversion and encoded as integers, including values above R’s 32-bit integer range (supported exact range: +/- (2^53 - 1)). Antimeridian repair now touches only crossing cells.

  • PMTiles field metadata now uses TileJSON Number, String, and Boolean types, with a field_order extension preserving requested property order. view_h3_tiles() defaults to point_count for categorical output and skips H3 bookkeeping fields when choosing a numeric aggregate.

  • The streaming point pipeline (freestile_query()) now partitions the query result on disk and tiles each partition independently instead of sorting the whole dataset at once. This removes the global sort that previously spilled tens of gigabytes on very large inputs and makes billion-point tiling feasible with bounded memory. Runs that would exhaust a resource now stop with a clear error (naming the tile or region and suggesting drop_rate or a higher min_zoom) rather than degrading, and a failed run never disturbs an existing output. Optional environment variables: FREESTILER_TEMP_DIR (where bulk temporary data goes), FREESTILER_DUCKDB_MEMORY, and FREESTILER_STREAM_WORKERS.

  • With drop_rate, streaming point thinning is now computed per partition: the per-zoom density is unchanged, but the exact set of retained points can differ from earlier releases (the sampling phase restarts per partition, so membership shifts are not limited to partition boundaries). Without drop_rate output is unchanged.

  • Tile generation now uses dramatically less memory on large inputs. Encoded tiles are compressed and spooled to a temporary file as they are produced instead of being accumulated in RAM across all zoom levels, and the PMTiles archive is assembled by streaming from that spool. Together with allocation fixes in the GeoParquet reader and MVT encoder, peak memory for multi-million-feature polygon inputs drops to roughly the cost of the decoded features themselves. Note the tradeoff: tile data is staged on disk, so a build transiently needs about twice the final archive size in free space.

  • Output archives are now written atomically: tiles are assembled in a temporary sibling file that is renamed over the destination only on success. A failed run no longer leaves a partial archive, and an existing output file is preserved until its replacement is complete. Relatedly, overwrite = TRUE is now respected through the DuckDB and CRS-reprojection fallback paths instead of being reset to FALSE internally.

  • Identical tiles are no longer deduplicated within the archive (a micro-optimization measured at ~0.01% of archive size on real data); the PMTiles clustered header flag is now computed from the actual tile data layout rather than always claimed.

  • macOS builds now use Rust’s baseline deployment target for Rust and dependency C objects instead of the host OS version. This prevents warnings when R links for an older macOS version. Explicit user deployment targets are preserved.

freestiler 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2026-06-24

  • Thin (sub-pixel-width) polygons no longer flicker in and out across zoom levels (#13). A polygon that collapses on a tile’s integer pixel grid is now replaced by a one-pixel square at its centroid instead of being dropped, so narrow features stay continuously visible. Ring winding is also normalized to the MVT specification (exterior rings positive area, interior rings negative), zero-area degenerate rings are dropped rather than emitted as invalid polygons, and quantization-induced spikes (out-and-back needle vertices) are removed.
  • freestile_h3() is a new function for dynamic hexagonal binning. It aggregates points into H3 hexagons at zoom-appropriate resolutions via DuckDB’s H3 community extension and writes a multi-layer .pmtiles archive where low zooms show coarse hexes, intermediate zooms show progressively finer hexes, and zooms at or above base_zoom show the raw points. Aggregation rules are user-defined SQL expressions (e.g. c(n = "COUNT(*)", avg_pop = "AVG(pop)")). Opt-in fade = TRUE produces overlapping zoom windows so adjacent hex resolutions can cross-fade visually.
  • view_h3_tiles() is a companion viewer that auto-styles a freestile_h3() archive in mapgl, detecting clean-break vs cross-fade mode from the PMTiles metadata.
  • Hexagons that cross the antimeridian are split at +/-180 degrees rather than rendering as world-spanning slivers.
  • See vignette("h3-hexagonal-binning") for a walkthrough.

freestiler 0.1.7

CRAN release: 2026-05-12

  • Updated the CRAN Rust build path to use a dependency graph compatible with rustc/cargo 1.77.2.

freestiler 0.1.0

Initial release.

Tile generation

  • freestile() creates PMTiles archives from sf data frames with zero external dependencies (no tippecanoe, no Java, no Go).
  • Supports MapLibre Tiles (MLT) and Mapbox Vector Tiles (MVT) output formats.
  • Multi-layer output via named lists or freestile_layer() per-layer zoom control.

Geometry types

  • POINT, MULTIPOINT, LINESTRING, MULTILINESTRING, POLYGON, MULTIPOLYGON.
  • Automatic CRS transformation to WGS84.
  • Z/M dimension handling (dropped automatically).

Performance features

  • Parallel tile encoding with rayon (across tiles and within tiles).
  • Tile-pixel grid snapping for zoom-adaptive simplification without slivers.
  • Buffered tile assignment and clipping for seamless tile boundaries.

Feature management

  • drop_rate exponential feature thinning with Morton-curve spatial ordering for points and area-based ordering for polygons/lines.
  • base_zoom control for ensuring all features present at higher zooms.
  • cluster_distance point clustering with point_count attribute.
  • coalesce line merging and polygon grouping.

MLT encoder

  • Spec-compliant MapLibre Tile encoder with varint, delta, RLE, and dictionary encoding.
  • Validated against mlt-core 0.1.2 reference decoder.