I want to comment generally on the idea
of version control. There seems to be a
folklore idea that version control is a
Stata variant on time travel, so that
saying (e.g.)
version 7
means that everything is exactly as it
was when Stata 7 was what you were dealing
with. This is not so. The only way to
experience the totality of Stata 7
is to use Stata 7.
I have also encountered the idea that setting
version 9
in Stata 8 would enable a user of
Stata 8 to use programs written for
Stata 9. That is wishful thinking in
its most distilled form.
Rather, version control is a way for StataCorp
to _reduce_ clashes, not to eliminate them, between
old and new software. It is perhaps important to note
that it does not cover (e.g.)
bugs
much stuff regarded as obsolete
some trivia
Having said that, I once started to try to write
an FAQ on this, and realised that I did not know
nearly enough to do a good job. I guess that only
senior StataCorp developers know enough about
this to write a really definitive account.
Nick
[email protected]
Richard Williams
> At 04:40 PM 6/16/2005 -0400, Michael S. Hanson wrote:
> >(Anyone?) In any event, I wanted to publicly thank Brian for his
> >follow-up support. He also correctly pointed out that all
> four programs
> >in -clemao_io- will need to be updated for Stata 9. Hence,
> I have taken
> >the liberty of cc'ing Kit Baum (the author of
> clem[ai]o[12].ado) on this
> >message. Thanks again to Nick and Brian for their assistance.
>
> Kit is using version control too, but it doesn't seem to be
> helping. I
> imagine version control must be one of the toughest things for Stata
> programmers - so many zillions of little commands and
> programs that might
> get broken inadvertently. In this case I am not sure why it
> worked in the
> first place - I don't see it documented as an extended function - but
> obviously it did. Maybe it was an undocumented function that
> Stata decided
> to kill?
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