New gfortran Builds and Xcode 3.0 Plugin
Today two new releases on the FORTRAN front - both nice to hear. The first is that there's a new build of gfortran on the Mac HPC web site. This is the stand-alone compiler that works with the Xcode 3 tools from Apple and gives you basic command-line gfortran compiling. It's an easy install - simply un-tar it and it's ready to go.
The other is that the MacResearch guys have put together a .pkg file for installing the above mentioned gfortran and also an Xcode 3-compatible plugin for gfortran so that you can create FORTRAN projects in Xcode 3 and build them without having to use Makefiles.
I'm a huge fan of the compiler, and I'll probably get the package and install it on my iMac G5 at home to make sure it works OK, but on the whole, I don't do a lot of work with FORTRAN that isn't already covered with Makefiles. This is because there's usually also a few C files and then I'm old school when Makefiles were considered 'new'. So I have them in my projects already and there very fast to write if needed.
But if I were teaching someone about FORTRAN, I'd definitely make sure they had the Xcode 3 plugin installed. Thanks goes out to the two groups for taking the time to update the tools.