fortran compilers
Evangelos Bertakis
It just came to my attention that the website of my favourite Fortran
compiler, g95, has been updated and I thought I should share it with
you. It seems that the g95 compiler is no longer considered beta, but,
as mentioned in the webpage: "a stable, production Fortran 95
compiler".
I believe the picture concerning the Fortran compilers available is
rather interesting. The Compaq compiler is no longer supported (since
Compaq no longer exists), and the Hewlett Packard compiler that
replaced it is not available for x86 systems (only for PA-RISC and
Itanium-based platforms). On the other hand, the Intel compiler is
actually I would say "a MS Visual Studio add-on", since it needs
Visual Studio installed in order to work properly. Nevertheless, it
still costs a few thousands of dollars (!). OpenWatcom, on the other
hand, supports only Fortran 77.
The Lahey/Fujitsu Fortran compiler seems very promising by browsing
its webpage. I have never used it personally, but it seems as the only
reasonable commercial option for a Windows system (there is also a
Linux version). The SUN compiler is also a very good one, but sadly
not for Windows programmers. However, for Solaris hackers and the
rest, it is definatelly a "must".
On the portable OSS world (Open Source Software), and let me stress
"portable", there are two options: the g95 compiler, and gfortran.
Now, when I had to make a choice, gfortran was too buggy to compile my
code, so I took up g95 and I've been loyal to it since then. From the
webpage, it seems that it is being reviewed almost daily (!) and it
has a lot of cool features (like that system() function that does all
those wonderfull tricks...).
Vangelis