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F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project

lists.llvm.org

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Re: F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project

#3

This is awesome! Fortran is still in use in many of the "hard" sciences. It will probably take several years, but this may mean we could consider deprecating one of the compilers we have to maintain for people.

According to TIOBE, Fortran is more popular than Google's Dart and Mozilla's Rust. Not to mention Kotlin, Lisp, and Erlang.

Re: F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project

#4
> The board also recommends that f18 evaluate (over time) whether it is reasonably possible to eliminate the dependence on C++’17 features.

Alright...

> Using C++’17 is not a blocker for inclusion into the project, but will be a blocker for certain other infrastructure (e.g. build bots and integration into official releases), but those may or may not be relevant now given the early state of f18.

C++'17 is too new for the developers of the premier C++ compiler to use in their CI? What is this hot garbage!

Re: F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project

#6

> The board also recommends that f18 evaluate (over time) whether it is reasonably possible to eliminate the dependence on C++’17 features. Alright... > Using C++’17 is not a blocker for inclusion into the project, but will be a blocker for certain other infrastructure (e.g. build bots and integration into official releases), but those may or may not be relevant now given the early state of f18. C++'17 is too new for…

LLVM, like a lot of compilers, tries not to require the latest version of itself to bootstrap. See https://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html#host-c-toolchain-b...

GCC is similar.

Re: F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project

#7

> The board also recommends that f18 evaluate (over time) whether it is reasonably possible to eliminate the dependence on C++’17 features. Alright... > Using C++’17 is not a blocker for inclusion into the project, but will be a blocker for certain other infrastructure (e.g. build bots and integration into official releases), but those may or may not be relevant now given the early state of f18. C++'17 is too new for…

I saw here they have a document explaining which C++17 features they use and why: https://github.com/flang-compiler/f18/blob/master/documentat...

Re: F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project

#8
post #6

> The board also recommends that f18 evaluate (over time) whether it is reasonably possible to eliminate the dependence on C++’17 features. Alright... > Using C++’17 is not a blocker for inclusion into the project, but will be a blocker for certain other infrastructure (e.g. build bots and integration into official releases), but those may or may not be relevant now given the early state of f18. C++'17 is too new for…

LLVM, like a lot of compilers, tries not to require the latest version of itself to bootstrap. See https://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html#host-c-toolchain-b... GCC is similar.

They should still be able to CI it on the min version that does work. Eventually c++'17 will be old enough, so definitely the thing to do is just wait.

Re: F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project

#9
post #5

Great news! Curious - are there any selfhosting Fortran compilers?

If a Fortran compiler were self-hosting, I might think twice before using it... I can't imagine implementing a parser/lexer in Fortran of all languages. Considering that loops and procedures are the main supported models of indirection/abstraction, I expect the defect rate per kLoC would be rather high.

Edit: Looks like OOP support arrived in Fortran 2003. Does anyone know how much of a difference it made?

Re: F18 Fortran compiler and runtime project is accepted as part of LLVM project

#10

This is awesome! Fortran is still in use in many of the "hard" sciences. It will probably take several years, but this may mean we could consider deprecating one of the compilers we have to maintain for people.

According to TIOBE, Fortran is more popular than Google's Dart and Mozilla's Rust. Not to mention Kotlin, Lisp, and Erlang.

Fortran used to be more popular. However, TIOBE is a lacking indicator, as stated here: http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html (do a in-page-search with "Why is PYPL so different from TIOBE ?") Some other indicators such as Redmonk ( https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2019/03/20/language-rankings-1-1... ) show that both Dart and Rust are more popular than Fortran. (Although each of them have their own set of biases.)
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