Re: Any help needed in Fortran related development

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 4:29 AM, Jerry DeLisle <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I am one of the gfortran team developers/maintainers.
>
> I am curious if there are any particular areas within Octave I may be able
> to help with?
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry
>

I think the biggest problem with Fortran part of Octave is exceptions.
We use some Fortran codes with callbacks (e.g. lsode) and exceptions
can occur inside the callbacks.
Since we cannot rely on exceptions being correctly handled across
Fortran stack frame (or can we?), callback codes must be decorated by
special ugly macros that save & restore exceptions. It would be nice
to get rid of the whole ugliness. It could open the door to nicer and
more consistent internal error handling in Octave.

One option is to invent a mechanism that can unwind the foreign stack
frame correctly. Or if it was standard with gfortran, then perhaps we
could rely on it (the only other Fortran compiler I know is being used
to compile Octave is Intel Fortran).

Another option is to rewrite all callback code to use reverse
communication instead. That means, unfortunately, diving into decades
old Fortran codes and there's probably nobody around crazy enough to
do it without being paid for it :)

And, of course, you can help with any part of Octave you like...

hth

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