Re: fopen always returns fid=-1 since revision 8380

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Thomas Treichl <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jaroslav Hajek schrieb:
>>>
>>> A self made f2c/fort77 combination together with gcc/g++ 4.0.1.
>>
>> Huh. Why aren't you using gfortran?
>
> Oh yes - *uhhfff*, things would be much easier. It all started in the
> beginning of 2007 when Paul Kienzle and me started to create Octave.app for
> MacOSX... Ok, ok, I tell you the short story ;)
>
> Apple doesn't provide *all* of the GNU Compiler Collection, eg. gfortran,
> gcj and others are missing but at least the C/C++ 4.0.1 compilers are there.
> Creating a full compiler collection for myself would generally be possible,
> creating a *working* cross compiler collection for me and others for a PPC
> and i386 platform (like the one that already is installed on my Mac) is
> incredibly incredibly incredibly hard (this is where the other story begins
> about how to build universal binaries and a linker that combines all these
> codes in one dynamic lib and ...). Apple uses f2c (at least on MacOSX 10.3.x
> and 10.4.x machines - don't have any knowledge about 10.5.x) to build the
> high performance '-framework vecLib' and other Fortran libs in the SDK (at
> least that's what they say on their developer's website). The '-framework
> vecLib' is used by Octave sources instead of a self made blas/lapack, so the
> most compatible way to create binaries is that I use f2c, too.
>


OK, I understand, the reasoning is good. One thing that surprises me
is that a company like Apple uses an unmaintained product like f2c
instead of investing, e.g., into porting gfortran to their platform. I
guess they only use f2c to build the Fortran interface, because any
computational code compiled by f2c + whatever C compiler would be
easily outperformed by using a fortran compiler directly.
Huh. Apparently another company that considers Fortran dead. Sigh.
Fortran is a zombie - a Terry Pratchett's zombie. It died, but it
continues to unlive, within a small, active community, enjoying its
afterlife. You may ignore it, but it's still around, while the
mainstream languages are consistently failing to replace it.

Btw, the f2c compatibility is usually no problem - most compilers
(gfortran included) provide a flag to ensure it. But of course I
understand that you don't want to build gfortran yourself - I was
always under the impression that the entire gcc is ported to Mac.

Btw2, for those still interested in Fortran, has anyone checked g95
recently? Wow, eh?

> f2c/fort77 is not so bad right now. But all Mac users are hoping that they
> somewhen get a full compiler collection on their Macs. I hope that somewhen
> I can say bye bye to f2c and say hello to gfortran. Right now, I don't have
> any chance.
>
> Best regards again,
>
>  Thomas
>



-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz