[cfe-dev] Clang should natively support fortran

[Yuri via cfe-dev]

On 06/22/2016 15:31, C Bergström wrote:
> This is going down a rabbit hole pretty far off topic, but the most
> sincere answer I can give
> --------
> Linux, OSX and Windows
>
> I'm a pretty strong Fortran advocate and even I wouldn't have any
> argument about trying to keep Fortran support in the FBSD base system.
> Why???!
>
> Does FBSD have optimized math libraries?
> GPGPU support?
> IB drivers support?
> Is anyone shipping HPC solutions for FreeBSD
> Is anyone actually testing the codes..
> (I won't even go into the kernel side of things..)
>
> In general I don't even know if typical common HPC codes will build on
> FBSD... I have a strong doubt anyone tests it.
>
> Time and energy is probably better spent focusing on improving things
> your community actually needs.


I disagree.


You seem to focus on the business use of the OS, and ignore some other 
uses. Do you know about Jupyter notebook software (http://jupyter.org)? 
It allows to create the interactive math- and physics-based books that 
allow the reader to explore and experiment with formulas and 
computations right inside the book? A lot of Jupyter uses fortran-based 
libraries in the background. And Jupiter is a pretty cool thing. There 
is also the symbolic computer algebra Cadabra2 (http://cadabra.science) 
that also uses fortran in the background. And many other packages use 
fortran too.


FreeBSD has a lot of advantages compared to Linux, OSX and Windows. For 
example, on FreeBSD you can have a 100% open source system, and all 
Linux distros always mix in some random third party-built binaries. This 
is a security risk. FreeBSD doesn't just grab the latest versions of 
packages from github like linux distros do. This is another security 
risk. You can't just blow this off, these are very significant 
advantages. And how can you make a case for the business use of Windows 
or OSX on a computation farm? Why add the licensing costs? It just 
doesn't make sense to me.


Following your logic, nobody should do any new things because there is 
some gigantic industry already doing things some other way. Why even 
develop clang if there is gcc that already compiles everything fine?


Yuri

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