Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 01:33:19 -0700 From: "marty fouts" <mf.danger@gmail.com> To: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> Cc: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>, Mike Jakubik <mikej@rogers.com>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, kmacy@fsmware.com, Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu> Subject: Re: [RFC] Removal of Fortran from the base system Message-ID: <9f7850090605270133g1bf80a55tf6b967858aab5036@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <13610.1148715854@critter.freebsd.dk> References: <447801D9.3060901@FreeBSD.org> <13610.1148715854@critter.freebsd.dk>
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On 5/27/06, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> wrote: > > I suspect the only reason it is there in the first place was that > it saved somebody at Berkeley the trouble of keeping track of another > release/tape/etc. If I remember correctly, (and it *was* twenty years ago, so I may not,) f77 was included because the VAX was often seen as an engineering machine and so it was easier to get people to accept BSD over VMS if it had a compiler. I know that we relied on f77 to keep our engineering guys from demanding another vax to run their simulation codes on at Ames, because I can recall swapping 4.2 out and VMS in on Amelia long enough to benchmark their codes to show that f77 produced code that was fast enough compared to DEC's fortran compiler Besides, there was fortran compiler on the 6th edition tapes, how could you leave it out of BSD? ;)
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