FAQ

What kind of files can I upload?¶

Currently, anything that the Python zipfile or Python tarfile functions can handle. Generically, this means

• ZIP files (.zip)

• TAR files (.tar, .tar.gz, .tgz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz)

If you need a particular format, feel free to reach out to us.

How does this run my code?¶

For R, the system runs

/usr/local/bin/R --no-save --no-restore -f (MAIN_FILE)

For Stata, the system runs

/usr/local/bin/stata-mp -b do (MAIN_FILE)

How do I know a job failed?¶

When a job fails to run, you will see a notice in the job status page:

You should inspect the Run output log and Run error log files to see what went wrong. When a job fails, no Replicated Package is produced.

What are all these output files?¶

SIVACOR produces six output files:

• A replicated package as a ZIP file. This contains all the original files, and the output files generated by SIVACOR.

• A run output log and a run error log. Ideally the latter is an empty file, but it contains all the error messages the software may have produced. For packages like Stata, these are more likely included in the run output log.

A few TRACE-related files are produced that can be used by others to verify that the files (figures, tables) were truly produced by this system.

• A TRO Declaration file. It describes the various states of the process, and describes the files present at each step. On SIVACOR, this is relatively straightforward, but it can grow more complicated.

• A TRS Signature file. This is a text file that contains a cryptographic signature of the results, which can be used to verify that the results have not been altered.

• A trusted timestamp file. This file contains a timestamp that is certified by a trusted time server, used in the signing process.

These three files are also included in the tro folder inside the replication package.

It’s failing on a file, but the file is there!¶

Actually, the file may not be called exactly the same thing. The containers used by SIVACOR are based on Linux, and Linux uses a case-sensitive file system. So if your main file is called Main.do, or Main.DO, that is not the same as main.do. The same applies for any files written or read by Stata or R: Reading from data/raw/gs4.csv is not the same as reading from data/Raw/GS4.csv.

What do I set my working directory to for this to work?¶

We often hear from authors

The person who wants to replicate our files has to set their own path.

and see code like

cd "C:\Users\username\Documents\project"

or

setwd("C:/Users/username/Documents/project")

You must avoid this for SIVACOR to work. You should use relative paths throughout, and if setting a path, do it once, dynamically.

global rootdir : pwd

cd "$rootdir"
use "data/mydata.dta", clear
save "output/results.dta", replace

use "$rootdir/data/mydata.dta", clear
save "$rootdir/output/results.dta", replace

library(here)
setwd(here::here())

library(rprojroot)
setwd(rprojroot::find_root(rprojroot::is_rstudio_project))

rootdir <- here::here()
# alternatively:
# rootdir <- rprojroot::find_root(rprojroot::is_rstudio_project())
data <- read.csv(file.path(rootdir, "data", "mydata.csv"))
write.csv(results, file.path(rootdir, "output", "results.csv"))

Stata errors¶

r(601)¶

This is a file-not found error. There are two reasons for this:

• you did not include the file in your uploaded package

• you included a file that is similarly named, but has different capitalization. Ensure that your code uses naming that matches exactly the files you included, including upper/lower case.

What do I do with the replicated package that I can download?¶

You can upload it directly to the journal submission system! For instance, in the case of the American Economic Association, simply import the ZIP file into the AEA’s Data and Code Repository (see instructions).