[Bug fortran/34804] Porting aid: flag to disable BYTE, INTEGER*1 and INTEGER(KIND=1)

["anlauf at gmx dot de" <gcc-bugzilla at gcc dot gnu dot org>]

------- Comment #5 from anlauf at gmx dot de  2008-01-17 20:37 -------
(In reply to comment #4)

> Now, what Harald wants is (IIUC) a -ffake-lack-of-integer-kind-1 option, that
> would make gfortran behave as if it had no integer(kind=1).

Right.

> Though it would
> help the porting process in this very particular case, my opinion on that is
> that it's a feature that's way too low in the benefit/cost ratio (not that the
> cost is very high, but the benefit is really small), and I'd actually oppose to
> it unless new arguments are provided (or current arguments are made more
> convincing).

I do not have a strong feeling about it, and I would accept it if you
propose to close this issue.

The effort in porting to (more or less) exotic platforms depends on the
flexibility of the tools at hand.  I just had to work out some issues with
the Fortran90 interface of the NetCDF package on the SX.  (NetCDF usually
works fine everywhere else.)
To reproduce the problems and to produce a comparable and consistent
configuration on Linux, I ended up hacking the configure script of NetCDF
where it tests for the available Fortran types and the C equivalents
of those types.  It took several iterations to achieve that goal.
A "-ffake-lack-of-integer-kind-1 option" would have made it easier to
resolve clashes in interfaces and similar issues.

> (In reply to comment #2)
> > But by reading the standard I do not see a reason why there should
> > be a 1-byte integer type.
> 
> The standard indeed mandates no such thing. (We all agree that, at least for C
> intercompatibility, it's certainly a very good thing to have, though.)

There are even good uses for 1-byte integer types in Fortran.
Too bad NEC does not support this type, even if its use inhibited
vectorization.


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http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=34804