questions on gfortran

[FX Coudert]

Hi Luca,

I hope you don't mind me answer to the list, as people there can  
benefit from questions and answers, and contribute to answering...

> First, since I saw there's a gcc.exe file in your package, but it  
> doesn't work, I wonder if it would be difficult to build a version  
> of the binaries with both gfortran and gcc.

The gcc.exe file in that package is the C compiler that comes from  
the same build as the Fortran compiler. It should work. Can you  
explain how it fails?

> That's because some projects make use of both fortran and C  
> languages, which I guess should be compiled and linked together  
> with the same version of gcc

For most uses, that's not required: as long as you stick to similar  
calling conventions, any version of the C compiler (indeed, any C  
compiler with the same calling conventions) should do.

> Second, since I saw how you provide patches on the mailing list, I  
> would like to ask you if you could kindly tell me how you can make  
> a patch for many files together... is it a feature of a version  
> control system? In that case, could you please tell me if you use  
> RCS, CVS or others?

The GCC project uses subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/). You  
might want to note that even the standard "diff" tool can make multi- 
files diff (by diff'ing a directory with option -r, if I remember  
correctly).

> Third, from my tries (although not 100% sure yet), I think I found  
> that flags like -march=pentium4 and -mfpmath=sse don't give  
> significant performance gains with gfortran under windows, while  
> they do under linux (I know, I should do some deeper testing before  
> telling this...). However, do you know if they are activated also  
> in the windows binaries?

I'm not very good with optimization flags, so I hope other people  
here can help you... But don't you also need -msse with -mfpmath=sse?

FX