Re: GNU Fortran

Alexander Verhaeghe wrote:
> I downloaded GNU Fortran and I have a lot of trouble
> with it. There is no decent explanation on how this
> works, a lot of info which is not usefull.

Where did you download it from?

Where did you look for an explanation on how it works?

GNU Fortran is free software.  That means that people are free to 
repackage it and redistribute it, and a lot of people do.  Thus, there 
are many places you could have downloaded it from, and many places you 
could have looked for explanations, and many of them aren't up-to-date 
or particularly complete.  We have no way of knowing where the problem 
is if you don't give us actual details.

> Not all
> Fortran code is supported, MODULE statement? USE
> statement? global constants? global structs?,
> interface with Win32 all features that apparently do
> not work with GNU Fortran, a lot of questions
> unanswered.

The current version of GNU Fortran, as available on all of the official 
download sites, supports all of these things.  (Except, maybe, some of 
the Win32 interface things -- I'm not sure what you're asking for there, 
as the Fortran 95 standard does not mention Win32.)

> If I have to look hours to find this and
> still didn't find anything, then something is wrong!

Yes, something is wrong.

Without you telling us what methods you looked to find, and what you 
looked at, it's impossible to tell what is wrong, however.

For instance, did you look at the official GNU Fortran webpage, which 
contains links to a number of methods to download the latest releases, 
and to the official documentation for the program?  It's here:
   http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran

If you looked at that, what particular questions do you have that it 
didn't answer?

If you didn't look at that, then why not?  Did it not show up when you 
searched for GNU Fortran documentation?  If not, how did you search?

> Free software may be good, but most of the time,
> explanation is (very?) poor, almost never a decent
> IDE, no samples, ... Microsoft and Borland they have
> at least very good editors and complete environments
> and big KB. Of course You cannot do that since it's
> free.

"Free" means that other people are free to distribute the software in 
"unofficial" ways, and that there's no requirement that they do a good 
job of it, or that they tell you where to find the documentation.  Thus, 
you have to learn to look for it.

GNU Fortran is not meant to be an IDE.  It is merely meant to be a 
compiler.  The two are different things; if you want an "all in one" 
package that contains IDE, editor, and compiler, then you're looking for 
something different.  In particular, what you may be looking for is the 
Eclipse IDE, and the extensions that allow it to work with GNU Fortran. 
  (I'm not sure how complete the latter are, or where to find them.)

Also, this newsgroup and the comp.lang.fortran newsgroup are available 
to you to search; I should think that they provide many of the features 
of a Knowledge Base.

> That's the price I guess we have to pay for
> having no support. I'm wondering is this usefull?

A substantial number of people have used it for real work, myself among 
them.  I should think that that's a fairly clear answer to your question.

Would you like to contribute to making GNU Fortran better?  A good start 
would be answering the questions I asked at the start of this email.

- Brooks