gfortran links to bug lists

[Paul Thomas]

Dear All,

When I made the links to specific categories of bugs on the gfortran 
wiki, I was trying to point out that we are still a ways from having a 
fully satisfactory F95 compiler - admittedly, the bugs are getting to be 
increasingly obscure but our aim should surely be to make as good an F95 
compiler as we can before moving on to F2003.

I find it a bit concerning that the focus has shifted so far to F2003 
that I have had to resurrect my own Bugzilla lists.  Is this really what 
we want to be doing right now?  If so, OK, I'll plough my own furrow but 
I'd rather that we all pulled together.

I am as keen as the next to get serious F2003 features into gfortran.  
In fact, I have ideas about how to proceed on many of them, and have 
even done some fairly serious experiments on them - eg. the ABSTRACT 
INTERFACE and PROCEDURE patch.  However, I do think that we should walk 
before we run.  I am struck that Tobi Schlueter and I were talking 
character bugs two years ago and that I am still struggling, after all 
this time, with a very big character patch.

I was very disappointed at the complete lack of interest in revamping 
the parser to carry out some fairly fundamental inprovements to 
gfortran.  Whilst we are doing OKish on Polyhedron execution tests, we 
are still not scoring very well on diagnostics and module usage is 
woefully slow. (Try to get your heads around F2003 classes without 
sorting this out.)

What do you all think?  Am I wasting my energy or are others also 
committed to a systematic development of gfortran?

Yours

Paul