Noting required/suggested dependencies for a package

[Brian Quistorff]

Is there a standard way to list what the dependencies are for a package? Should one just use "Requires:" and "Suggests:" (or "Recommends:") lines in the pkg file? Are there any tools that extract this information?

[Sergiy Radyakin]

Brian, see here: http://www.stata.com/manuals13/rssc.pdf
I think the package reference to moremata is shown as an example, not a mandatory requirement:

Requires: Stata version 12.1 and moremata from SSC (q.v.)

On the second question it is more difficult. Authors are expected to declare minimal version suitable for their programs. In fact the authors commonly declare the lowest version they had at their disposal at time of the testing, and many programs do work if the version is lowered by editing the file. By doing this however, you take the responsibility for the change, since Stata also gets updated and fixed, and perhaps the version declaration was intended to protect you from difficult to catch bugs, that you may experience.

In general it is not possible to understand what Stata version will be required for a program. But for most real programs it is possible. If you need to solve a particular task, describe details. If you are looking for a general solution - there is none.

Best, Sergiy Radyakin