Re: Will tree-ssa be GCC 3.5?

[Matt Fago <fago at caltech dot edu>]

It does seem that there are not enough informed supporters for GCC in 
the labs, and I applaud you for your efforts. My own work as an ASCI 
university collaborator has been hampered by the lack of a free F95 
compiler, and I sincerely hope that you are able to convince ASCI to 
support gfortran.

It would seem that the labs could best support gfortran by funding 
several of their own programmers (or ASCI university collaborators) to 
contribute to gfortran, rather than shoveling money at some third party.

However, from the referenced ASCI report:

> ...the lack of a standard-compliant, open-source [F95] compiler. There
> is no single cross-platform, standard-compliant open-source compiler
> solution.
>
> [...followed by talk about interoperability between C/C++/F95 etc on
> multiple platforms, and a requirement for performance within 10% of
> native compilers]
>
> [gfortran is] hampered by its choice of  the GPL, which limits the
> ability of commercial companies to supply a custom, proprietary
> back-end to the front-end or to use the front-end in a tool.

Given the ubiquitous success of GCC, it seems obvious (?) that only GCC 
could hope to provide this result without essentially duplicating GCC in 
its entirely. However, the statement regarding the GPL is worrisome and 
out-of-place considering the stated desire for an open-source tool. What 
good is an open-source front end if the back-ends are all proprietary?! 
Given the proper development support one would hope that GCC could meet 
the 90% performance requirement.

The proper question then seems to me to be:

   Can the lab requirements be sufficiently reconciled
   with the goals of gfortran?

If so (and I would hope so), then if the national labs support (say) ten 
programmers to work on contributions to gfortran, much of their efforts 
should eventually make it to a mainline release of gcc.


 - Matt