When is sparseX implementation expected?

Pete Meyer <petemeyer at ...> writes:

For some of our large models (>= 5k factor levels) I found that sparseX in
lme4a (under R 2.14.2) made a big difference in compute time.  I see that
it isn't yet implemented for this update to lme4.  Any idea how long it
will be until it is available again?

It has not been near the top of the priority list.  We have looked
at it and thought (more or less) "oh, that shouldn't be *too hard*,
but it looks somewhat annoying" -- see https://github.com/lme4/lme4/issues/6
If you want to chime in on the issues list that might help push the
priority up slightly.

  cheers
    Ben Bolker