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Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 13:46:10 -0600 (MDT)
From: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>
To: "David O'Brien" <obrien@freebsd.org>
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Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [RFC] Removal of Fortran from the base system
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> I'm saddened to see FORTRAN ripped out of the base system - and I'd
> personally do the import work if it weren't for the the extra
> dependencies GNU FORTRAN 9x requires.
>
> But 'ports/lang/gfortran' is an abomination.

I don't know about that, but it's certainly a lot of bloat.

This is why I alluded before to an f2c based replacement.

The reasons against inclusion of GCC 4.1.1 Fortran involves changing (and 
increased) library dependencies.  An f2c based f77 replacement would 
eliminate that problem while preserving functionality that has been part 
of BSD for over two decades.  Given the rate of change of f2c and it's 
associated libraries (i.e. practically nil), the maintenance overhead 
after the initial import to the base should be very small (even when the 
underlying C compiler changes). The majority of the import work would be 
writing a replacement f77 driver command.

--lyndon