Git for Economists: A Practical Guide
Integrating already existing projects
As researchers, we often find ourselves collaborating with others who have strong preferences about the tools we use to manage research projects. Some swear by Dropbox, others by Git. Among Git users, some prefer the command line over a graphical interface (UI).
The command line provides more direct access to Git’s functionalities, allowing users to automate tasks, handle large projects more efficiently, and troubleshoot issues better than most graphical tools. (Though the visual component of the UI is very appealing. My UI of choice used to be SourceTree.)
Recently, researchers around the world have embraced another tool for collaboratively writing academic papers: Overleaf. The plot below shows the global interest in Overleaf over time, based on Google search trends. The trend is clear: there has been a steady increase in searches, reflecting its growing popularity. Researchers rely on Overleaf for its ease of use in real-time collaboration, as it allows multiple authors to write (almost simultaneously) while tracking changes with each contributor’s name, making it easier to manage input from different collaborators.
