Re: [G95] planned obsolescence?

[Steven G. Johnson]

On 20 Jan 2003, Steven Bosscher wrote:
> Suppose we do change the name, would this also mean that your patches
> would be accepted to go into autoconf?

My proposed patch for f9x support in autoconf does not depend upon whether
g95 chooses a more generic name (autoconf has to support compilers named
f90 etc. anyway), although of course we'll add support for whatever name
you choose.  Maybe it would demonstrate my godlike influence in the world
of Fortran, though, and convince Akim to do whatever I say.  =)

> It would certainly help if autoconf and automake would start supporting
> $(FC).  The bulk of the work already exists, even for automake.  It's
> just a matter of accepting it.

I agree that Fortran 9x+ support in autoconf is important pending issue
for 2003.  This issue has becoming more and more critical over the last
few years, although the need has been dampened somewhat by the lack of a
free f9x compiler.

> Right now, Paul Brook has to maintain is own set of
> patches to autoconf[1] and automake to allow us to build our runtime
> library  (which is partially written in Fortran 90).

Thanks, I took a look at the F95 patches for g95...it looks mainly like a
copy of fortran.m4 to f95.m4 with s/f77/f95/.  Is that accurate, or could
you point to any more substantive changes you needed to make?  My proposed
autoconf patch should do what you want, while sharing the fortran backends
between dialects.

(I'm a bit surprised that you needed this at all, since I would have
thought you could just use AC_PROG_F77(f90) and compile all Fortran xx
files with $F77, especially since the backend is equivalent anyway in your
implementation.  I've done this for existing projects of mine where I need
to compile f90 files, with no major problems.  The current autoconf f77
stuff works for newer dialects for most purposes, except when one needs to
mix f77 and f9x.  My patch does address one additional issue, the fact
that IBM's xlf does not accept .f9* extensions without a special flag,
grrr.)

Steven

PS. For those who are wondering what this thread is about, see the
"Fortran 9x" thread on this list from last fall:
        http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2002-10/msg00188.html
and the proposed patch that I submitted based on that thread:
        http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2002-11/msg00009.html
I recently pinged the gcc-g95 developers to ask their opinion, and to also
suggest that they name their backend something less dialect tied, like
'gfc'.