Re: [Patch,fortran] PR 27740 Symbol versioning for libgfortran

[Steve Kargl <sgk at troutmask dot apl dot washington dot edu>]

On Sat, Nov 04, 2006 at 02:38:27PM +0200, Janne Blomqvist wrote:
> 
> the attached patch implements symbol versioning for libgfortran. At the 
> same time it does some namespace cleanup, so that all the exported 
> symbols have names beginning with _gfortran_.

This is good news.  I'll read through the patch later today.

> Originally my plan was to wait for the ISO_C_BINDING to do the namespace 
> cleanup of the intrinsics that are written in Fortran (the problem is 
> that standard Fortran does not allow symbol names to begin with "_"), 
> but after discussing this with FX on #gcc we agreed that there is a risk 
> that ISO_C_BINDING won't be ready to get into 4.3, especially if we want 
> to follow the normal gcc rules.  So instead we decided to implement a 
> (undocumented, for gfortran internal use only) command line option 
> -fallow-leading-underscore. FX implemented this as well as the namespace 
> cleanup, but I don't think he ever submitted the patch to the mailing 
> list, so it's included here as part of this patch.
> 

I'm not a big fan of undocumented options.  People have a way of
finding and using these options.  I'd rather document the option
with something like

-fallow-leading-underscore -- This option is intended for internal
    use by the gfortran developers.  IT IS SUBJECT TO GO AWAY WITHOUT
    WARNING.

-- 
Steve