glmer with non-standard links

binomial(link="identity")

Simulate data:

set.seed(101)
x <- runif(500, min = 0.4, max = 0.6)
nf <- 10
f <- factor(sample(LETTERS[1:nf], size = 500, replace = TRUE))
u <- rnorm(nf, sd = 0.05)
eta <- 0.1 + x + u[f]
y <- rbinom(500, size = 1, prob = eta)  ## identity link
d <- data.frame(x, f, eta, y)
summary(d)

##        x               f            eta              y        
##  Min.   :0.401   A      : 58   Min.   :0.439   Min.   :0.000  
##  1st Qu.:0.449   B      : 58   1st Qu.:0.537   1st Qu.:0.000  
##  Median :0.500   D      : 57   Median :0.586   Median :1.000  
##  Mean   :0.501   G      : 54   Mean   :0.587   Mean   :0.574  
##  3rd Qu.:0.551   E      : 52   3rd Qu.:0.638   3rd Qu.:1.000  
##  Max.   :0.600   I      : 49   Max.   :0.725   Max.   :1.000  
##                  (Other):172

Using the identity link fails in the stable version of lme4 (I have this version labelled as lme4.0 because I am working with the stable & development branches simultaneously, but these results should be identical with the stable version of lme4 on CRAN (0.999999-0))

library("lme4.0")  ## STABLE version of lme4
packageVersion("lme4.0")

## [1] '0.999999.1'

m0 <- glmer(y ~ x + (1 | f), family = binomial, data = d)
fixef(m0)

## (Intercept)           x 
##      -1.989       4.573

m1 <- glmer(y ~ x + (1 | f), family = binomial(link = "identity"), data = d)

## Error: mu[i] must be in the range (0,1): mu = -0.309168, i = 0

## (would like to use update() but it doesn't work ...)
detach("package:lme4.0", unload = TRUE)

library("lme4")  ## STABLE version of lme4
packageVersion("lme4")

## [1] '0.99999911.1'

m0 <- glmer(y ~ x + (1 | f), family = binomial, data = d)
m1 <- update(m0, family = binomial(link = "identity"))
fixef(m0)

## (Intercept)           x 
##      -1.989       4.573

fixef(m1)

## (Intercept)           x 
##     0.01386     1.11847