[mpich-discuss] mpifort wrapper compiler?

[Jeff Squyres (jsquyres)]

I deleted all the stuff that JeffH and I argued about in person.  It wasn't useful to keep arguing about those things here on the list.  :-)


On Dec 7, 2013, at 3:50 PM, Jeff Hammond <jeff.science at gmail.com> wrote:

>> So other than the backwards compatibility issue, a single "mpifort" wrapper that makes all 3 interfaces available makes perfect sense.
>> 
>> I don't think there can be any expectation that "mpif77" provides a true, honest, and only Fortran 77 compiler (because MPI never worked with Fortran 77).
> 
> How about we have mpifisffc (MPI FIxed Source Form Fortran Compiler)
> and mpifrsffc (MPI FRee Source Form Fortran Compiler) then?

When I asked earlier, everyone wanted "mpifort", and it's very much in conjunction with what several Fortran vendors are doing (i.e., a single executable name, and optional CLI options and/or .suffix examination if you want specific version syntax enforcement).

Open MPI has already released mpifort into the wild, and I hope MPICH does the same, because it will really make users' lives easier if they can assume that "mpifort" exists everywhere.

The point is that MPI shouldn't try to subvert what the underlying Fortran compilers are doing.  If they're consolidating down to a single name, so should we.  And if you have platforms where they're not, great -- don't consolidate to a single name (e.g., mpifort) on those platforms, and/or rely on downstream vendors (e.g., IBM) to do the right things for their platforms/compiler suites (e.g., the mpif* scripts that IBM is apparently generating).

> The only natural conclusion at this point is that it is critical to
> deprecate both mpif.h and the 'mpi' module, since the 'mpi_f08' module
> is clearly the only sane way to use MPI from Fortran.

Yes, this was the long-term plan.  The Fortran WG should probably meet again to take steps towards deprecating mpif.h... and possibly the mpi module.  :-)

-- 
Jeff Squyres
jsquyres at cisco.com
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