Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Version control for research projects

While I had used version control on earlier projects, I didn't start using version control for collaborative research projects until reading Code and Data for the Social Sciences: A Practitioner’s Guide by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro. If you haven't read it, it's a good read (I agree with the general guidelines and most of the specifics).

The first decision is which files to version. I version the dta, gph, tex, and log files.  I chose not to version easily generated files such as different formats of outputted figures and tables and instead generate them automatically using my Makefile. I normalize the dta, gph, and log files before committing them so that changes are noted only if real content has changed.

Some miscellaneous tools: rm-non-svn.shsvn_batch_rename.sh.


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