Re: Fortran 9x: time for a decision

[Steven G. Johnson]

On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, Kate Hedstrom wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 02, 2002 at 09:22:48PM -0500, Earnie Boyd wrote:
> > Steven G. Johnson wrote:
> > >On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Paul Eggert wrote:
> > >
> > >>It sounds like there is no perfect solution here, but I think it'd be
> > >>better to be consistent with GNU make.
> > >>
> > >>The GNU Make convention is that FC and FFLAGS are a pair, and F77 and
> > >>F77FLAGS are a pair.  By default they have the same meaning, since the
> > >>default value of F77 is "$(FC)", and the default value of F77FLAGS is
> > >>"$(FFLAGS)".  The default value of FFLAGS is empty; the default value
> > >>of FC is "fortran" on VMS, "cf77" on Cray, "xlf" on _IBMR2, "fc" on
> > >>Convex, and "f77" otherwise.
> > >
> > >
> > >I agree that consistency with GNU Make is a good thing, but I shudder at
> > >the thought of the howls of protest that might arise from all the existing
> > >Fortran users.  
> > >
> > >Moreover, I suspect that consistency with automake (which uses $F77 and
> > >$FFLAGS) should take priority over consistency with the implicit rules in
> > >GNU Make.
> > >
> > 
> > Absolutely not.  Automake needs to conform to make, so consider it a bug 
> > in Automake.
> 
> I agree. There have got to be a *lot* more Fortran people using gnu make
> than using autoconf/automake.

People who are not currently using autoconf/automake will have to upgrade
their Makefiles anyway in order to use autoconf, so this is not so much of
an issue. (Besides, it's not like Fortran users are particularly used to
GNU make standards, either.  e.g. LAPACK uses FORTRAN/OPTS instead of
F77/F77FLAGS.)

I'm just surprised that people can take the introduction of a backward
incompatibility in a programming tool so cavalierly.  Akim, what's your
opinion?

Note, for example, that this will mean that the autoconf with this change
will be unusable (sans hackery) by automake users for F77 until a new
automake is released.  (Obviously, the new FC stuff will not be supported
either, but that's a new feature, not a broken old one.)

If that's what you want, it's no skin off my back, but...

Steven