Re: egcs and g77

[Craig Burley <burley at gnu dot org>]

>On 05-Jul-98 Dave Love wrote:
>> ... but certainly not before at least reading the `Working Programs'
>> node of the g77 manual!  If claiming g77 fails to compile
>> standard-conforming code, you probably need to reference the relevant
>> clauses of the Fortran77 and/or Fortran9[05] standard.

>Are you suggesting that g77 can compile Fortran 90 and/or Fortran 95 code? 
>Where is the g77 manual?  I was not even aware there was such a thing.  As they
>say ignorance is not an excuse so I offer none.

Yet, it does seem like many more of the questions re g77 that suggest
the docs have not been read come via the egcs route.  egcs might have
become very popular, moreso than the gcc/g77 combination, especially among
new g77 users, which could explain the difference.  But it might also be
that the "pretty wrapping" packaging aspects of egcs, vis-a-vis its
supported languages, need ironing out.  And it might well be that they
already are in egcs 1.1-in-development; we've made some fixes to
how the g77 docs are installed, FWIW.  `info g77' should work, for
example, after a normal installation of egcs 1.1.

Also, it seems more likely people will think to look for and find
the g77 docs when they've had to take the extra step to obtain g77
instead of just getting it for "free" with most any egcs distribution.

Re F90/F95 -- g77 does support a few of the "easier" features of F90,
and soon maybe F95 (probably an intrinsic or two), which is why
we're interested in bugs g77 has regarding those features, and of
course we can't insist people tell us how those bugs indicate
violations of the F77 standard.  :)

But, generally, no, g77 can't yet compile F90 code.  We figure a g90
project will be nedeed to ever make that happen, though maybe g77
will "extend" itself to support many examples of F90 code down
the road.

        tq vm, (burley)