Re: egcs and g77

[Toon Moene <toon at moene dot indiv dot nluug dot nl>]

>  I do not wish to start a debate about the merits of g77
>  or f2c but my past experience with g77 has been that it
>  often either fails to compile standard fortran 77 code
>  or it generates the wrong code when compiled with
>  optimizations turned on.

Unfortunately, you never sent fortran@gnu.org any examples of such  
failures, so it is hard to say whether they've been solved in the  
mean time (if they were the compiler's fault).

>  Can I trust g77 to reliably generate the proper code with
>  optimizations turned on?  As I said I really don't want
>  to start a debate so please a simple yae or nae ... will
>  suffice.

We cannot answer such a broad question with a simple yes or no.  Of  
course we try to get the compiler bug-free, but in such a large  
project, there will always be corners containing bugs.

My experience is that for our code (a 1300-routine numerical  
weather forecasting system) egcs is without failure, but you should  
note that we don't do any complex arithmetic, and I only tested it  
on my m68k-next-nextstep3 system.

Perhaps you can send us some of the failures you get ?  Please send  
them to fortran@gnu.org - if they are of general interest to the  
egcs crowd, we will forward them here.

Thanks,

--
Toon Moene (mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl)
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 346 214290; Fax: +31 346 214286
g77 Support: mailto:fortran@gnu.org; NWP: http://www.knmi.nl/hirlam