Regarding the discussion about gcc 4.5.0 problems on darwin and the
back-and-forth between Toby and Jack:
I have just now caught up on this thread, and I want to echo my
support of pretty much everything Jack Howarth has said. I'm a long
time user of gcc/gfortran for high performance scientific computing.
The HPC world essentially revolves around two compiler suites: gcc and
intel (although a few other commercial compilers still have notable
followings). Both perform well on linux and OS X. Only one of them is
free. If gcc (and hence, gfortran) support on OS X and macports is
allowed to stagnate and die, there will be no viable free option for
modern Fortran compilation on OS X. g95 is simply too slow and based
on too old of a gcc codebase to warrant consideration.
Fortran is not a 'dead' language or standard. There are many features
of Fortran 2003 which are still being implemented in gfotran, and
essentially all of the Fortran 2008 standard (co-arrays!) still needs
to be implemented. The llvm/clang community appears to have nobody /
very few people interested in implementing a Fortran front-end, and
the gfortran maintainers are not going to branch out and start
contributing to clang. Fortran is still used every day in scientific
computing and the availability of a modern gcc/gfortran on OS X is a
major reason I use macports, and, in fact, and am able to use my Mac
for work at all (without shelling out for the Intel compilers). It is
very important to the HPC community that macports/Apple keeps the
latest gcc up-to-date and available!
Brian
p.s. ... I have patched the latest openmpi Portfile on my local
machine, making the obvious changes to allow it to use gcc44 instead
of gcc43 (the port seems stagnant). Compile + install went fine.
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