[Discuss] fortran + gcc 4

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2006-11-07 09:40-0800 pw wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Does anyone know if g77 works with gcc version 4?

No it does not.  Use one of the two (see below) free fortran 95 alternatives
instead.

> The read me at the GNU mirror(s) says not to try anything
> other than gcc 2.8 with the posted version g77-0.5.23.
>
> Alternately does g95 have any problems with g77 code?

There are actually two free fortran 95 projects.  g95 is independent of
gcc-4.x but depends upon it while the gfortran project (which forked from
g95) is part of gcc-4.x (see http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran for details.)

I have no experience with g95, and for gfortran only have experience with 
making the transition to it from g77 for one project (PLplot).  However,
that transition required no code changes to our fortran 77 interface to
PLplot and no changes in our fortran 77 examples. From this experience, and
from reading it appears fortran 77 code is reasonably well supported by
gfortran (and g95).

BTW, we have also recently prepared a fortran 95 interface to PLplot as well
as fortran 95 examples.  That was my first experience with fortran 95, and I
was most impressed (particularly by the power of the array handling and
fortran module capabilities for having a well-defined API).  gfortran did
well in this case also (although I believe there may be some exotic fortran
95 capabilities still missing).  From these initial good experiences, I look
forward to trying out some of my other fortran 77 research codes with
gfortran and gradually modifying those codes to take advantage of some of
the fortran 95 array and module features I have learned about.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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