[mpich-discuss] Is it okay to remove F77 support?

[Gus Correa]

Is it okay to remove F77 support?
No, NO, NO!!!! NO!

Removing the support to Fortran 77 from MPI is a disastrous idea!
Sorry to say, but it is really stupid to suppose that only because
compilers support F90
that you can remove F77 support from MPI.
A lot of people, academic institutions, and probably industry, continue to
use,
and develop new code in F77.
What matters is if the CODE is written in Fortran 90 or in Fortran 77,
and whether it uses the Fortran 77 MPI API or the Fortran 90 MPI API,
not whether the compiler supports Fortran 90 (and yes, if not all, do).

There is an enormous Fortran 77 code base, written using MPI, and that is
not likely to change for the foreseeable future.
That is true in the Atmospheric/Climate/Ocean sciences, where I work,
but would guess this is true in other areas of science as well.
Just one example: The MITgcm, which has an huge community of users,
is the backbone for many research projects, supports many PhD thesis,
is 100% written in Fortran-77 and will not be changed anytime soon,
as there is no financial support to do that.

Also, this type of inquiry to the MPICH community is way too narrow.
I don't think you should be using emails on a mailing list to base such a
consequential decision.
Argonne should know better which community it supports, which codes out
there use MPI.

Thank you,

Gus Correa
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 6:12 PM Zhou, Hui via discuss <discuss at mpich.org>
wrote:

> Dear MPICH community,
>
>
>
> Can we assume at this point of time, that every Fortran compiler out there
> supports Fortran 90 at least?
>
>
>
> --
> Hui Zhou
>
>
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