Hi Janus: > I would surely appreciate some input from others, also from users (in > particular from Andrew as the bug reporter). In general: Is ABI > compatibility of different gfortran versions important to gfortran > users? (For me personally, as a user, not so much. I usually don't > link my own code with pre-compiled Fortran libraries).
Right now, ABI compatibility of gfortran versions isn't very important to me, for the following reasons: * The main code I'm compiling with gfortran links against three libraries which all generate .mod files (HDF5, FGSL and FoX). I have to recompile those when the module format changes anyway, so recompiling if the ABI changes isn't a big problem. * I don't link to any libraries that I haven't compiled myself, so if the ABI changes I can just recompile them. (Although I should say that this isn't really by choice - I'm compiling them myself because they either weren't available on some of the HPC systems I'm using, or else the installed versions were too old.) * Since I'm using the development version of gfortran I'm expecting there to be changes, and I'm happy to see them if they are a result of new functionality being added of bugs being fixed. However, I think the above reasons are quite specific to me, and might not be true for the majority of gfortran users. Also, I certainly agree with Tobias that ABI (and .mod) compatibility are very important in general - if compatibility can be maintained without stifling progress on implementation of new features and bug fixing then I'm all for it. My knowledge of compiler development is far too limited to judge how difficult maintaining ABI/.mod compatibility is in any specific situation though! -Andrew -- * Andrew Benson: http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~abenson/contact.html * Galacticus: http://sites.google.com/site/galacticusmodel
