On Nov 16, 2007, at 3:19 PM, Ernest Prabhakar wrote:
As David Gohara can tell you, this is something we've been
discussing with MacResearch for several years. The challenge has
been waiting for a stable version of gFortran for gcc 4, since g77
wasn't drop-in compatible with gcc 3.
Since Ernie brought this up, I think we are OK to start discussing
this more openly. It is correct that we've been pushing for this for
some time. A few months back we put up a request to help come up with
a test suite to test gfortran builds:
We didn't give much reason for this at the time since we weren't
allowed to publicly discuss this until now.
The point that Apple has made is that it wants to support fortran
development, but there are some issues in doing so. The primary being
that Mac OS X doesn't have a single line of fortran in it. If they
break gcc they know immediately since they build Mac OS X every night
and problems can be addressed immediately. They also have a vested
interest in gcc since, again, it is used to build the OS.
What that means is that we need to come up with a good testing
suite that covers the gamut of compilation scenarios and can also be
used to test the numerical accuracy of output from the builds. There
are some testing facilities that come with gfortran, but in reality
given the variety of code and applications that use fortran, we need
something that tests the tool and tests against other fortran code
bases.
What I would propose is that as a user community of scientists and
developers we come up with a set of reliable tests that Apple could
then use for QA for building (and including) gfortran as part of the
developer tools. Ideally we'd keep this focused in one or two places
(max), so either on this list or as part of the thread at the URL
above. If there are also any compiler developers (either gcc/gfortran
or otherwise) that can also lend guidance or are willing to
participate, we'd welcome any contributions and insight into things
that should be considered.
I personally am glad that Ernie commented here. In the past people
have voiced their opinions about the lack of fortran support in the
Apple dev tools, this is our chance and we should collectively move on
this. Otherwise there is nobody to blame but ourselves.
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