Re: Proposal for warning in gfortran documentation and man page.

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

On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 07:39:17AM +0200, Toon Moene wrote:
> L.S.,
> 
> Attached is my proposal for the warning in the gfortran documentation 
> and man page. Passed make info, make man and make dvi on 
> powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu.
> 
> Please comment.
> 

No offense intended, but I don't like what is written.
For example, 

> + emph{Gfortran is still in an early state of development.}
> + @command{gfortran} can generate code for most constructs and expressions,
> + but much work remains to be done. In particular, this compiler does not
> + support all of Fortran 77 yet.  We recommend distributors continue to
> + provide packages of g77 from GCC 3.4 for the time being.
> + When gfortran is considered a complete replacement for g77 we will
> + announce it.

The above passage makes gfortran appear to be nothing more than
a Fortran 77 compiler.  There is no mention that gfortran
supports a substantial amount of the Fortran 95 standard.


@emph{Gfortran is in an early stage of development of a 
fully compliant Fortran 95 compiler}.  It can generate code
for most constructs and expressions, but work remains to be
done.  In particular, there are known deficiencies with
ENTRY, NAMELIST, and sophiscated use of MODULES and DERIVED
TYPES.  Individuals, whose Fortran codes conform to either
the Fortran 77 standard or the Gnu Fortran 77 language, 
should continue to use g77 from GCC 3.4 as the recommended
compiler.  The @command{gfortran} developers welcome any
feedback on user experience with @command{gfortran} at 
@email{fortran@gcc.gnu.org}.


-- 
Steve