g95 as a system fortran compiler?

[Anton Shterenlikht]

I'm a user, not a developer, so I might be talking nonsense,
in which case I apologise.

I think the lack of a fortran compiler in the base OS is
a significant minus of an otherwise very general OS.

I understand that gfortran is not an ideal choice for
many reasons, not least that it doesn't build on ia64.

I think g95 could be a better choice for the following
reasons:

1. very few dependencies, easy to maintain:

Port:   g95-0.92.20090624
Path:   /usr/ports/lang/g95
Info:   Fortran 95 compiler from g95.org
Maint:  gahr at FreeBSD.org
B-deps: gettext-0.17_1 gmake-3.81_3 libiconv-1.13.1
R-deps: 
WWW:    http://www.g95.org/

2. builds fine on amd64, i386, ia64, sparc64 (and alpha, but this
is no longer relevant). Also builds fine on linux ppc, mips, arm
(haven't got fbsd stats for these archs). 

3. actively developed, including co-arrays, a fortran 2008 feature

4. proven track record of successful integration with
numerical libraries, scientific software, etc.

I think inclusion/exclusion of system fortran is best
controlled via /etc/src.conf, for those who have no use
for it.

Any comments?

-- 
Anton Shterenlikht
Room 2.6, Queen's Building
Mech Eng Dept
Bristol University
University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 331 5944
Fax: +44 (0)117 929 4423