Getting versions of Stata modules

For reproducible research it is important to be able to reproduce your analysis environment. For Stata analyses, one needs to list the version of Stata modules used. This is especially important as the ssc archive does not store previous versions of modules. Ideally, one is storing the module files with a project, but it is still useful to have a measure of the version of the modules. Stata modules are not required to list a version number (NB: this is separate from which -version- of Stata the module is requesting). Many modules do, and if so one can often find them in the text of the ado files (use -viewsource command.ado- for this). If not, one can use the version date. Modules on SSC are required to list their "distribution date" . If you are installing modules from a version control server (e.g. Github) then the install date is sufficient. Stata keeps this information in a "stata.trk" folder at the base of each module directory tree (e.g. PLUS) which depends on your adopath. To get this information you can use the following simple script.

$ cat stata.trk | grep "^\([SND]\|d Distribution\)"