Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 19:44:07 -0700 From: Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: [RFC] Removal of Fortran from the base system Message-ID: <20060527024407.GA2525@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>
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In a recent email to freebsd-current, http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2006-May/063435.html Alexander Kabaev stated that the import of GCC 4.1.1 is coming soon. I propose that Fortran support in the base system be removed when GCC 4.1.1 is imported. Pros: 1) The current Fortran 77 compiler is g77, which has been removed from the 4.x series of GCC. Removal of Fortran support will simplify the base system and the import. 2) There are at least two Fortran 95 compilers available in the Ports Collection (ie., Intel's ifc and GCC's gfortran). Fortran 77 is a proper subset of Fortran 95, so these compilers can replace f77 (aka g77). 3) The current Fortran Standard is Fortran 2003. Both ifc and gfortran are adding the new features of F2003. g77 will never become a Fortran 90, 95, or 2003 compiler. Cons: 1) History. A Fortran 77 compiler has been available in the base system since FreeBSD was known as 386BSD+patchkit. 2) Numerous ports include Fortran code, so the Ports Collections would need to grow dependencies for one of the Fortran compilers available in ports/lang. If GCC 4.1.1 becomes the base system C/C++ compilers, then I would suggest the de facto Ports Collection compiler should be gfortran 4.1.1. <bike> Metallic blue </bike> -- Steve
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