I am sorry that you find this inelegant. It was offered
as a practical solution, not as an exemplar of elegance.
For my part, I can't support your urging StataCorp to
introduce new commands which aren't needed. There
are many things more needed and more desired.
Nick
[email protected]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
> Stas Kolenikov
> Sent: 29 September 2004 16:23
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: st: further version questions
>
>
> Well certainly so, but you'd agree this is not a very elegant
> solution. It's like saying, "Why would one need return values r() or
> e() or s() if you can just return the results in $S_1, $S_2, etc.?"
>
> Stas
>
> On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:54:13 +0100, Nick Cox
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I am not clear that this need depend on StataCorp
> > introducing new commands.
> >
> > Any user-programmer could set up a system like
> > this using globals and locals.
> >
> > In one main program a programmer could set
> >
> > global frog_version 42
> >
> > and in called programs could set
> >
> > local frog_version 42
> > if `frog_version' != $frog_version {
> > di as err "frog: using a mix of old and new versions"
> > exit 498
> > }
> >
> > and so on.
> >
> > Nick
> > [email protected]
> >
> > Stas Kolenikov
> >
> >
> >
> > > > But that would gain you nothing, really. -mvis- is just part
> > > > of a package and the whole package would need
> > > > to be scanned in a bid to remove Stata 8 features,
> > > > which would I guess require considerable programming
> > > > expertise.
> > >
> > > Can I pick from here on my own thing? Each time I update Sophia
> > > Rabe-Heskteh's -gllamm-, some of the modules come out to
> be outdated,
> > > which I only find out when it crashes. (I know -net
> install- should
> > > work perfectly, but I found once that one of the older pieces was
> > > sitting in a directory of -adopath- prior to others, and
> thus caused
> > > problems until I deleted it from there). So for all five or six
> > > ado-files I have to type -which gllamm-, -which
> gllapred-, etc., and
> > > compare to the current versions on -gllamm- website.
> > >
> > > So my suggestion/wish/grumble to Stata Corp. is to set up
> something
> > > like -userversion- version control system, so that the internal
> > > version of the module is specified not through
> > >
> > > *! v.3.1 NJC 29 September 2004
> > >
> > > in the first line of the ado-file, but as a
> > >
> > > *! NJC 29 September 2004
> > > program define blahblah, eclass
> > > version 8.2
> > > userversion 3.1
> > > userneed blahblah_ll 1.11
> > > ...
> > > end
> > >
> > > Then whenever -blahblah- calls -blahblah_ll-, the
> -userversion- of the
> > > latter is checked against 1.11 and should be no less than
> that. Or an
> > > option like
> > >
> > > userneed blahblah_ll 1.11, strict
> > >
> > > can be provided for the lazy programmers like me who do
> not want to
> > > program their routines to be backward compatible, so that
> the current
> > > version of -blahblah- will only accept -userversion 1.11- to work
> > > with.
> > >
> > > Is this too much to ask for? Does anybody else in the
> stataworld need
> > > this except me?
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