Hi Stepan, * Stepan Kasal wrote on Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 04:33:48PM CET: > On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 06:45:51PM +0800, Davyd Madeley wrote: > > [...] the macros to test for -c/-o compatibility in automake. [...] > > this is an interesting question: is the test for "-c -o" really needed > for a Fortran or F77 compiler?
The old UNICOS 9 Fortran compiler does not grok `-c -o'. The manuals for the recent ones, however, suggest that they still don't implement it. Likely, non-free Fortran compilers on w32 don't support it (e.g., because they spell `-o' differently, as does MSVC for C/C++), but that is just a guess. > Currently, _Autoconf_ contains macros to test "-c -o" for C, Fortran, > and Fortran77 languages. _Automake_ contains a wrapper for the C macro, > but not for the latter two ones. > But the latter two macros have the following comment attached: > # The usefulness of this macro is questionable, as I can't really see > # why anyone would use it. The only reason I include it is for > # completeness, since a similar test exists for the C compiler. I would hereby question the usefulness of above comment: I don't see any reference or even claim to the contrary (that all compilers grok this). Surely, *without Automake support* the usefulness is limited. > My impression is that we should remove the artificial macros and write > new ones if/when there is a real need. I think there is a need. > So the questions are: > Are there any Fortran* compilers which don't understand "-c -o"? Yes. > Are there ones which do understand "-c" yet don't understand "-c -o"? I have yet to come across one that does not understand `-c'. > Would it be bad if projects using Automake required GNU Compiler for > Fortran? Yes, definitely, as long as you still have to hope that CVS GCC is good enough to compile some piece of third-party code you happen to need. Cheers, Ralf