[LLVMdev] GSoC project questions.

Marc Driftmeyer
2013-04-13T01:09:46Z

Just a stab here and not basing it upon any recent exposure as a
Mechanical Engineer and CS graduate with FORTRAN 90/03 but I have always
perceived DragonEgg as transitional bridge solution and not an end
solution for languages LLVM/Clang presently or in the future have yet to
support directly within their infrastructure.

Personally, the sooner I don't have to have the GCC infrastructure to
run FreeBSD, Debian Linux or any other platform the better. It's not a
dig at GCC, it's a dig at bloat. Having a robust FORTRAN library that is
always a must in Numerical Analysis preludes often an equivalent
robustness in equivalent C/C++ libraries, though never at an exact level
of precision.

Not to mention I would suspect the likes of ANSYS, MatLab, Mathematica,
etc., would be rather pleased to port their applications across OS X,
Windows, UNIX [Linux/FreeBSD] knowing LLVM/Clang/Flang isn't entangled
with GPL licensing issues.

- Sincerely,

Marc J. Driftmeyer

On 04/12/2013 07:53 AM, Justin Holewinski wrote:
> I always liked the sound of 'flang' :)
>
> I'm curious, what benefits would we see from a "native"
Fortran
> compiler for LLVM versus DragonEgg, assuming we'd still need the
> gfortran standard library anyway (in the short-medium term)?  Or put
> another way, is there Fortran code out there we optimize poorly
> *because* of using DragonEgg?  I haven't used DragonEgg much, so if
> this is obvious I apologize.
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Anton Korobeynikov
> <anton at korobeynikov.info <mailto:anton at
korobeynikov.info>> wrote:
>
>     > Indeed, dragonegg supports Fortran, but through a gfortran
>     bridge. The
>     > really interesting part in Fortran is in fact arrays!
>     >
>     > Anyway, it's just my opinion, I'm a simple user ;)
>     Fortran has its own standard library and it's damn big. Also, the
>     Fortran grammar is not the simplest (or, rather - straightforward
>     one). So this certainly looks too big for GSoC.
>
>     Though, it might be a good start for someone.
>
>     I believe Bill (CCed) started something few years ago. So, maybe he
>     can share his thoughts on this project.
>
>     --
>     With best regards, Anton Korobeynikov
>     Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics, Saint Petersburg State
>     University
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>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Thanks,
>
> Justin Holewinski
>
>
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