> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger Harbord [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 6:25 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: RE: Generating random variates
>
>
> I glanced at Thomas Steichen's message (below) and realised
> that although I
> thought I had the -rnd- package installed, the help file I
> see is quite
> different to the one he quotes. I tried -findit rnd- again
> and saw that
> there are four sources for this package:
>
> 1) STB 41 sg 44.1 Correction to random number generators.
> 2) STB 28 sg 44 The original programs.
> 3) rnd from http://www.stata.com/users/jhilbe
> 4) rnd from http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/r
>
> I had originally installed -rnd- by clicking on the sg44.1
> link (1) and
> assumed that I had latest update, and that 3) and 4) were
> copies of this in
> other places. However, I was wrong - to install the lastest
> versions of all
> the commands you need to click on 3) to get the latest
> version of most of the
> programs, then 4) if you want updates to F, t and chi-squared
> generators
> that allow non-centrality parameters.
>
> Am I the only one to find this a little confusing? (Try -findit rnd-
> yourself).
>
> I greatly appreciate the ease of installing user-written
> commands and updates
> in web-aware Stata, but this seems to be one case where it's
> not quite as
> simple as it might be. Deciding whether to force
> installation replacing
> already-installed files was complicated by the fact that
> there seems to be no
> standard format for showing the date in the output produced
> by -findit-, or
> the help files - sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.
> So it's not
> always immediately obvious whether you're about to install a
> newer version or
> an older version.
>
> Doubtless all of these updates have been announced on
> Statalist at the time,
> but I've only been using Stata since March (and getting the
> statalist-digest
> since April). From statalist discussions earlier this year
> I'd got the
> impression that updates to STB/SJ programs should be
> published, no matter how
> briefly, in the STB/SJ. Hence my belief that installing the
> latest STB/SJ
> insert was enough to ensure I had the latest versions.
>
> Having worked out the situation for -rnd- (I think), I guess
> I'm now asking:
> what's the best way in general to be sure you're installing
> the latest
> version of any package?
I've mentioned before, but I'll mention again, my feeling that this is a
problem. I wonder if -findit-, -net describe-, and other such programs
could be modified to (optionally) display the "*!" lines of any ado
files they turn up? As urged by the recently-created stylerules.hlp,
those lines at the beginning of an ".ado" file often include the version
number and date, which would make it easy to compare with what's
installed.
Nick Winter
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