on 7/14/05 10:15 AM, Eric Bergman at email@hidden wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I'm very pleased to have found this list, as I have had trouble
> finding information about using Fortran under Mac OS X. I've been
> using Absoft products for many years (Language Systems before that),
> currently at Pro Fortran 9.0, for my seismology research programming.
> The Absoft compiler and IDE works fine but I don't really use most of
> it's features and I get tired of regular expensive updates. I have
> recently wondered if I could switch my Fortran development to the
> Xcode IDE. I'm running Tiger 10.4.2 and I just installed Xcode 2.1
> last night.
>
> I understand there is no Fortran compiler provided by Apple with
> Xcode but I have seen comments that there is no inherent reason why
> it can't be done. I have read that f77 is compatible with Xcode 2.1
> but that gfortran is not. Most of my code is in Fortran 77, but I
> have begun using some f90/95 features and that will only continue.
>
> Can anyone provide some specific advice about how to install a
> compatible fortran compiler (even if only Fortran 77) in Xcode 2.1?
> Is it done using Fink?
>
> The other general question I have is whether it is feasible to use
> Xcode's Interface Builder to add a GUI to a Fortran program?
>
> Thanks in advance for any advice,
>
I also have a background in Absoft products on Mac, and find them to be high
quality and well supported. With my move from OS 9 to OS X, the upgrade
would have been (out of my personal pocket) $500-$1000 or so, so I went
looking for alternatives.
For a while the compiler that was 2x faster at execution than all the
competition was IBM's xlf Fortran. It was very pricey unless you could get
an academic license. With Mac going to Intel chips, apparently xlf is being
frozen at the OS X 10.3 level. How well xlf functions under 10.4 could
possibly be answered by other list members. There are rumors that Intel
Fortran may become available when Macs move to Intel chips.
In looking for alternatives, I first found g77. It is the Free Software
Foundation version of Fortran 77. You can download Mac binaries at
http://hpc.sourceforge.net/
You'll also need the Xcode developers tools with gcc, etc. installed before
you can use it. There are installation instructions on the HPC site. There
is also a Fink version, but I prefer my compilers, etc. to be located in
/usr/local/bin. Note that g77 is now frozen and is no longer updated. It has
worked well for me for two years with a half-dozen legacy Fortran codes.
The successor to g77 is gfortran, a full Fortran 95 compiler. There are Mac
binary versions available from
http://www.gfortran.org/
but my experience is that it is very much still in the development phase,
and not yet ready for heavy-duty work. It is an official part of the GCC
project that includes gcc, g++, etc.
What I have been using most successfully while waiting to see what develops
is g95
http://g95.sourceforge.net/
which, like all the others, requires Xcode tools to be installed first. g95
usually compiles legacy Fortran 77 code with only minor changes to things
like the date and time routines. My experience is that the compiled code is
about the same speed as g77 compiled code, in other words, not the fastest,
but OK. This compiler has amazed me, though, by compiling and executing a
code that led to "segmentation faults" with g77. This is a separate project
from gfortran, and you can see the discussions on the web sites.
I'm still using OS X 10.3, and one of my hesitations to moving to 10.4 is to
be sure that all the software that I need and have working will still
function when I get there, especially a Fortran compiler.
If you need the support and reliability, stay with Absoft. If you have some
time to experiment, try one of the alternatives. At least that's my
experience.
Joe
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Fortran-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden
