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From: ravi@earth.ce.nwu.edu (Ravi Sinha)
Newsgroups: alt.sys.sun,comp.lang.fortran
Subject: How Broken is Sun Fortran (Summary)
Message-ID: <3140@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 3 Feb 91 03:26:03 GMT
Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Reply-To: ravi@earth.ce.nwu.edu (Ravi Sinha)
Organization: Civil Engineering Dept., Northwestern University
Lines: 55

Thanks for the many replies I received.

The general consensus is that there are bugs in it, but the overall 
performance is better than that of fortran v1.2.

Bugs:
o  If an unformatted file of length >8k is created, the program should
   be created with -Bstatic option.

o  Because of a bug in the SunOS, use of TMPFS filesystems in v1.3 
   cause problems.  Work-around is to apply the relevant OS patch.
   <khb@Eng.Sun.COM>

o  Function statements sometime generate bad code.  
   <p554mve@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de>

Feature:
o  Can not mix object codes of v1.2 and v1.3.

General Comments:
o  Most people seemed to be quite pleased with v1.3.1 at patch level 2.
   The programs seem to run faster with this version of the compiler (will 
   this change the Mflop rating of our computers? ;).

o  One can also run v1.2 with SunOS 4.1.x.  One can just copy the old compiler 
   to the new system; or reinstall, and when the installer fails, modify 
   extract_unbundled in /usr/tmp/unbundled to include 4.1 in supported 
   OS types, and run *this* installer script.

o  Sun is coming out with a new version of fortran compiler sometime 
   in spring.

Question to more knowledgeable readers:
o  While it is possible to combine old (OS4.0.3) c object codes with the 
   new fortran, why is it not possible to combine v1.2 object codes?  Or 
   am I mistaken about compatibility with c object codes?

Thanks to the following people for responses:
roberto@bondi.phyast.pitt.edu (Roberto Gomez)
john@ghostwheel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
khb@Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman fpgroup)
Scott Lamson <lamson@el1.crd.ge.com>
Dieterich Erwin
	<erwin%suncvt12.verfahrenstechnik.uni-stuttgart.de@RELAY.CS.NET>
black@seismo.CSS.GOV (Mike Black)
dgh@validgh.com (David G. Hough on validgh)
rfinch@locke.water.ca.gov (Ralph Finch)
opto!glen@gatech.edu (Glen Clark)
p554mve@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Michael van Elst)
unocal!stssram@sunkist.West.Sun.COM (Bob Myers)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ravi Sinha			|  As usual, the opinions here 
Northwestern University		|  are mine, and only mine.
ravi@earth.ce.nwu.edu		|  Who'd want to claim these anyway?