Basic Stata and Git Workflow

You can call Git from the Stata command prompt via the shell function. For more information on this command checkout the help documentation.

help shell

Basically, you can run any Git command from Stata by typing shell or ! before it.

For example, to initialise a Git repository in the current working directory you would have to run:

shell git init .

This will launch a Shell window and close it almost immediately. Although it may look like nothing has changed, the git repo has been initialised. To confirm, type:

dir .git/

Which should display the contents of the hidden .git/ directory that is present in all git repositories.

You can then go on to create a .gitignore, stage files and commit changes.

What are the main advantages of this way of doing things?

• You get to stay within Stata and don't have to switch back and forth between Git bash and/or your favorite Git client.

What are the main disadvantages?

• No informative messages, that you would get by using another terminal, like Git Bash.
• No automatic text complition with the Tab key.
• No syntax highlighting.

Here are the steps I took to create this little example

1. Create Stata project in a directory, create README.md file and write down instructions.

2. Initialise Git repository.

   ! git init .
   

3. Stage README.md and .stpr file and commit.

   ! git add README.md git-with-stata.stpr
   ! git commit -m "Initial commit :hatching_chick:"
   

   Update: It's not a good idea to commit .stpr files.

4. Create little do file and run.

5. Stage do file and figure and commit.

   ! git add scatter*
   ! git commit -m "Add a little example script and figure"
   

6. Go to GitHub, create a repo with the same name, without initialising a README. Then locally add origin and push.

   ! git remote add origin https://github.com/mpaulacaldas/git-with-stata.git
   ! git push --set-upstream origin master
   

7. Update README.md, stage, commit and push.

   ! git add README.md
   ! git commit -m "Update README"
   ! git push