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Re: Fortran 90
- From: Toon Moene <toon at moene dot indiv dot nluug dot nl>
- To: "Prof. M.B. Patil" <mbpatil at ee dot iitb dot ac dot in>
- Cc: gcc-bugs at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 00:19:03 +0200
- Subject: Re: Fortran 90
- Organization: Moene Computational Physics, Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
- References: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0309292103190.14281-100000@bhairav.ee.iitb.ac.in>
Prof. M.B. Patil wrote:
Dear All,
I tried hard to get a free f90 compiler for linux on the net, also
saw plenty of discussion on this topic in a news group. I got the
following impressions from this exercise. Please correct me if
necessary.
1. VAST90 which used to be free has now become commercial (Indeed,
I used it because it had this nice feature of tolerating already
functional g77 code, and it was free! But it does not allow the
option of array bounds checking which would make debugging a lot
easier for me).
I didn't know VAST90 wasn't available for free anymore, although - if
true - it could easily explain why I never get bug reports from the
usage of VAST90+g77 anymore.
2. There is the "F" compiler from the Fortran company which is free.
However, this is not a true f90/95 compiler as it does not allow
compatibility with f77; e.g., common blocks are not allowed.
Indeed, a deliberate decision of the F development group (i.e., to only
support the good new things of Fortran 90 and onwards).
3. People talk about the Intel Fortran compiler as being free, but
that seems to be a myth. It is free only for evaluation and not
free for ever, if I understand correctly. After evaluation, I
guess one is expected to buy it.
I thought is was gratis for non-commercial use, but as I do not have any
Intel hardware here (I failed to win an Itanium box at the GCC summit in
Ottawa, May 25-27), I have no experience with that compiler.
4. The g95 project seems to be the only hope in this respect, but
it is not clear when it will be ready.
It's hard to say when it will be "ready" because, as a volunteer
project, work on it is done as time permits. However, there's a good
chance that it will be released with version 3.5 of GCC, which is
estimated to arrive Q4 of 2004.
Hope this helps,
--
Toon Moene - mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phoneto: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
Maintainer, GNU Fortran 77: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/g77_news.html
GNU Fortran 95: http://gcc-g95.sourceforge.net/ (under construction)