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This page is intended to provide information on the Gnu Fortran (g77) compiler. Right now, the only useful info is an html version of the TeXinfo manual. I plan to expand this page, maybe with links to projects having used g77, benchmarks, maybe an archive of the mailing list, whatever. If you know of any such pages, please let me know
GNU Fortran, or g77, is designed initially as a free replacement for, or alternative to, the UNIX f77 command. (Similarly, gcc is designed as a replacement for the UNIX cc command.)
The g77 compiler is a combination of a front end that translates Fortran source programs and a back end that uses the results of the translation to make an object or executable file that performs the actions specified by the source programs when run. The back end is the same back end used by GNU C, C++, and Objective-C, which have their own front ends to translate their respective languages. Other front ends for Pascal and ADA are in progress.
The run-time libraries for g77 are currently whatever is compatible with the libraries used by the f2c program, a public-domain Fortran-to-C converter from AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bellcore. f2c comes with its own libraries (written in C) for systems that don't already have compatible libraries. By using the same libraries, procedures compiled by g77 and f2c can be freely mixed to create an executable program. However, g77 is unable to offer some popular extensions that aren't supported by f2c-compatible libraries, and the interface to the libraries isn't necessarily a high-performance design. Thus, use of the f2c library interface might be a short-term thing.
The above is quoted from the .plan file written by James Craig Burley. To get the whole story, look at the file itself to see current status.
It is important to note that g77 is still considered beta software, though the latest version (g77-0.5.23, released 1998-04-23) is very stable.
Most of the front end was written by James Craig Burley. For more detailed info on other contributors see Contributors to Gnu Fortran in the Documentation.
This is an html translation (produced thanks to texi2html) of the texinfo documentation that comes with g77.
From your usual gnu archive site, under a name like g77-0.5.23.tar.gz (or .tar.Z, or something). The Gnu project's web site has a list of mirrors. Please use the one closest to you.
A whole bunch of Fortran software for Linux is available from the Linux archive on sunsite.unc.edu including a precompiled binary of the 0.5.22 release.
I was quite surprised to discover that someone ( Mumit Khan) had been bold enough to port g77 to the Gnu Win32 environment. Details and software are here
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This file was written by Michel
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