DEVNOTES.md

Development notes

Internal notes on the project developmet history.

There were a lot of repos involved in this project.^[I think some of them were initially created by Rick, which is why we had some duplication. Plus then in 2021 moving them over to V-Dem.] Trying to sketch a history here. This diagram shows all involved repos (some of them are private):

flowchart BT
    subgraph main [Main repo]
        direction LR
        vd[vdeminstitute/demspaces]
        ad[andybega/democratic-spaces]
        acs[andybega/closing-spaces]
        acs --> ad
        ad --> vd
    end
    
    subgraph helper [Helper R packages]
        direction LR
        av[andybega/vfcast]
        adr[andybega/demspaces]
        vdr[vdeminstitute/demspacesR]
        av --> adr
        adr --> vdr
    end

    vdr -.-> vd
    adr -.-> ad
    av -.->  acs

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Basically from very early on, in 2019, there were two tracks of repos:

1. The main development repo with the forecast pipeline.
2. A helper R package to abstract away the complicated modeling functions for handling a dozen outcomes.

During the spring 2022 update I also added a {demspaces} R package in the vdeminstitute/demspaces repo.

Anyways:

• andybega/closing-spaces (private): development repo with all the ugly bits
• andybega/democratic-spaces: a cleaned-up subset of the development repo for reproducibility
• vdeminstitute/demspaces: V-Dem version of the main repo
• andybega/vfcast: initial helper R package
• andybega/demspaces: complete companion R package with helper functions
• vdeminstitute/demspacesR: V-Dem version of the R package

The V-Dem repos were created during the 2021 V-Dem v11 update, when I copied over the existing code to new corresponding V-Dem-owned repos.^[I.e. I did not transfer repo ownership on GitHub, creating instead new repos without the original development git history.]