Re: linking files compiled with older gfortran

[kamaraju kusumanchi <raju dot mailinglists at gmail dot com>]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:13 PM, Steve
Kargl<sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 08:47:59PM -0400, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote:
>>
>>I hope gfortran becomes stable enough soon.
>>
>
> Ouch.
>
> So, what's your problem with gfortran?

Before I answer this, I want to say I am a big fan of gfortran and I
greatly appreciate the work being done by all the gfortran developers.
I constantly use it, test it, report bugs (whenever I find any). This
mailing list is great in terms of support/knowledge etc.,

I have been constantly upgrading from gfortran 4.0 onwards. Every time
some problem or the other comes up and the standard answer is that
upgrade to the latest version. In a corporate/academic environment, on
a multi user production system, upgrading compilers, libraries is a
painful process (to say the least). It is even more painful if you do
not have administrative privileges, space restrictions etc.,

Anyway, I am mainly interested in seeing a standard confirming fortran
90 (or 95) compiler with full debugging support, good optimization
capabilities. Currently I see very good fortran 90/95 support, decent
optimization. I'd like to see more debugging support.

Gfortran's development has always been "to try and catch up with the
latest standard". With Fortran standard being updated constantly this
is always going to be a lagging process.

As gfortran developers, many on this list might be more interested in
catching up with the latest standard. But as a user, I am more
interested to see a compiler which implements a specific standard
completely before stepping into the next standard.

May be the solution is to branch out gfortran into g95, g03 etc.
whenever a new standard is made. For example, g95 concentrates on
fortran 95 code, its optimization, debugging support etc., but does
not much care about F2003 features. g03 concentrates on fortran 2003
standard code etc.,

raju