Re: [Patch, wwwdocs] Update Fortran part of the GCC 4.8 release notes

[Paul Richard Thomas <paul dot richard dot thomas at gmail dot com>]

Dear Tobias,

Could you note that class(*) is complete up to the restriction to
fixed length character values only?

Thanks

Paul

On 20 December 2012 10:55, Tobias Burnus <burnus@net-b.de> wrote:
> The following patch updates the Fortran part of the GCC 4.8 release notes at
> http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html#fortran
>
> It adds quips for
> - CLASS(*)
> - The new BACKTRACE intrinsic
> - A compatibility notice
>
> I would like if someone could comment on the latter. I think it is time to
> explicitly inform about compatibility issues with gfortran. So far, smaller
> ABI changes were done all the time [affecting very special cases or very
> experimental features] and the .mod version was different in every release.
>
> (The smaller ABI changes were related to code which required modules, hence,
> the .mod version change forced users to re-compile. In fact, the .mod
> version change in 4.8 has just be done to force recompilation.* Thus, the
> past ABI breakages were and this ABI breakage is very unlikely to lead to
> run-time/link-time issues.)
>
> Comments? Suggestions?
>
> Tobias
>
> * The background for 4.8's ABI changes were: The module name was missing
> from module-defined procedure-pointer variables, leading to a potential
> naming clash with same-name variables in different modules. And the
> deferred-length string ABI was changed as some systems didn't like a "." in
> the assembler name of a variable.



-- 
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
       --Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy