gfortran

[Tim Prince]

Brooks Moses wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 02:51:33PM +0000, Eef van Beveren wrote:
>>  Fedora 6 has been installed on my computer
>> and with it gFortran. 
> 
> As mentioned elsewhere, Fedora has compatibility packages which offer
> g77.  We have not stopped making g77 available; GCC 3.4.6 -- which
> contains it -- can still be downloaded from the gcc website.
> 
> What we have not done is the very substantial amount of work required to
> update and rewrite g77 to work with GCC 4.0 and later.  The common parts
> of the compiler changed significantly, and it would have taken a
> substantial amount of effort to rewrite g77 to work with them.  There
> simply aren't enough volunteers with any interest in doing this.
> 
> Thus, the decision was made to instead make the new Fortran compiler,
> gfortran, into an (almost) completely compatible replacement for g77.  
> Even with all of the effort from all the Fortran volunteers going into
> this task, the compiler was not complete for version 4.0, and is still
> quite buggy in version 4.1.  Version 4.2, which should be released
> within a month, is significantly better; nearly all of the regressions
> from g77 -- and, yes, we do consider differences between the two to be
> bugs, and give them the priority of any other compiler regression --
> except some fairly small ones should be fixed.
> 
> Unfortunately, it will take some time for the updated version to get
> into Linux distributions; it's certainly not there now.  You're probably
> working with the quite buggy 4.1 version, but it's possible that what
> you have is the 4.0 version which is even worse.
> 
> My recommendation would be for you to install a pre-release copy of
> GCC 4.2 (see the main http://gcc.gnu.org website for a link), and try
> that, and see if that fixes your problems.  If it doesn't, feel free to
> file bug reports about the differences; there are also links to the
> bug-reporting page from the main gcc.gnu.org page.
> 
In view of the much improved support given gfortran, and lack of same in 
recent years for g77, I have requested my employer to consider changing 
the current assumption that g77 is the common denominator Fortran for 
linux.  Not only that, but gfortran inter-operates better with the other 
software products we require.  Evidently, I don't speak for those to 
whom I have made the request.