darwin may lose primary target status on FSF gcc

[Brian Barnes]

On Sep 22, 2009, at 5:04 PM, Jack Howarth wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 04:43:14PM -0500, Brian Barnes wrote:
>> 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.
>> _______________________________________________
>> macports-dev mailing list
>> macports-dev at lists.macosforge.org
>> http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-dev
>
> Heh, it's kinda late now. We just got depreciated as a primary target
> today...
>
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2009-09/msg01523.html
>
> and they are already queuing up to commit patches which will
> break the darwin builds...
>
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2009-09/msg01545.html
>
> It will be interesting to see how helpful the other non-darwin
> maintainers are without the requirement to support darwin as
> a primary target.
>             Jack


Well, this has the potential to be an absolute disaster for the future  
of gcc and Fortran on OS X.  I am surprised that the GNU SC would  
abandon an active part of its userbase like this.  I do not like how  
GNU licensing changes compared to the 4.2 days are turning out for OS  
X users.  Of course, in my perfect world Apple would put some money  
into hiring people for Fortran work on clang/llvm, but really, why  
should they care?  Fortran will never make an impact on their  
quarterly statements unless they plan on challenging linux in the HPC  
world.  It's not going to happen.

Terribly disappointing -- if this proceeds along the path of the worst- 
case scenario, my next laptop may not be a Mac.

Brian