require: Package dependencies for reproducible research

Abstract

The ability to conduct reproducible research in Stata is often limited by the lack of version control for community-contributed packages. In this article, we introduce the require command, a tool designed to ensure package dependencies are compatible across users and computer systems. Given a list of packages, require verifies that each package is installed, checks for a minimum or exact version or package release date, and optionally installs the package if prompted by the researcher.