On Tue, Jan 26, 1999 at 10:06:44PM -0800, David O'Brien wrote: > > The question is whether Peter wants to include g77, and whether > > people would see this as bloat. I know g77 outperforms f2c+gcc > > on my real-world benchmarks by a significant margin. > > A good question, is how easy it is to download egcs-g77-1.1.1.tar.gz and > build it into something workable assuming the EGCS C and C++ compilers > are part of the system. > > I've got a Bmaked contribified version of EGCS, but didn't do g77. So > maybe a consensus should be made what to do about FORTRAN in the base > system. > I for one feel that Fortran should remain as part of the base system, either as f2c or g77. I would prefer g77 because of the performance advantage and compatability with Fortran code being ported from other systems. This is something I do quite a bit of.
I have contributed a couple of ports that are written in Fortran and I plan on contributing more. I have been waiting to see what decisions were made in this area however before proceeding. The biggest problem has been that the port of g77 has not worked properly for quite some time and in fact is currently marked as broken. I would anticipate that this situation would not change much in the future if the base gcc (egcs?) is modified far enough away from a "standard" gcc distribution, as is currently the case with our gcc. As far as getting g77 from the egcs port, well, the release versions have been fine for g77 but the snapshots have been hit and miss. The ports system has not provided a reliable means of Fortran support, IMHO. However, if g77 were part of the base FreeBSD system, assuming f2c is ripped out, then Fortran support would be "gaurenteed" to be there when needed. I understand that most people using FreeBSD are using it for server tasks and C development. However, FreeBSD is also an excellent OS for a scientific workstation, and that means Fortran is essential. I run a "farm" of 6 dual CPU PPro/PII systems running quantum chemical calculations 24/7. I do my part to get my colleagues to try FreeBSD instead of NT and Linux. Removing Fortran support from the base system will make that a tougher job. Thanks. -- Glenn Johnson gljo...@bellsouth.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@freebsd.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
