1996-03-05 This directory contains the version 0.5.18 release of the GNU Fortran compiler. The GNU Fortran compiler is free software. See the file COPYING.g77 for copying permission. * IMPORTANT: Things you _must_ do are marked with a * at the beginning of the line in this file!!! This README is for GNU Fortran, and describes the files in the f/ directory. The f/ directory is intended to be a subdirectory of a gcc source tree. These directories are referred to below as gcc/, which is the top-level directory containing the gcc back end, the gcc C front end, and other non-Fortran files, and gcc/f/, which contains all of the Fortran files. * To build GNU Fortran, you must have a recent gcc distribution, such as version 2.6.3 or 2.7.0. Do not attempt to use any version of gcc prior to 2.6.2 or at or beyond 2.8.0 (or 3.0, etc.), because this version of g77 is designed to work only with gcc versions 2.6.x and 2.7.x. * Note that you must have source copies of these gcc distributions!! You cannot build g77 just using binaries of gcc. Also, unless you are an expert, avoid using any distribution of gcc not identical to the one distributed by the FSF -- for example, using a special version modified to produce better code for the Pentium (sometimes labeled gcc-i2.6.3 -- note the `i') will not work with this distribution of g77. If you have just unpacked the g77 distribution, before proceeding, you must merge the contents of the g77 distribution with the appropriate gcc distribution on your system before proceeding. * Read and follow the instructions in g77-0.5.18/f/INSTALL that explain how to merge a g77 source directory into a gcc source directory. You can use Info to read the same installation instructions via: info -f g77-0.5.18/f/g77.info -n Unpacking The resulting directory layout includes the following, where gcc/ might be a link to, for example, gcc-2.7.2/: gcc/ Non-Fortran files in gcc (not part of g77*.tar) gcc/README.g77 This file gcc/f/ GNU Fortran front end gcc/f/gbe/ Patches required for gcc back end versions gcc/f/runtime/ libf2c configuration and f2c.h file generation gcc/f/runtime/libF77/ Non-I/O portion of libf2c gcc/f/runtime/libI77/ I/O portion of libf2c gcc/f/ as a whole contains the program GNU Fortran (g77), plus a portion of the separate program f2c, which is in gcc/f/runtime. NOTE: The f2c code is not part of the program g77, just distributed with it. This directory is named gcc/f/ because it, along with its contents, is designed to be a subdirectory of a GNU CC (gcc) development directory. I.e. when a gcc distribution is unpacked into a directory (named gcc/ for example), it typically contains subdirectories like gcc/config/ and gcc/cp/. The latter is the subdirectory for the GNU C++ (g++) program. Similarly, the g77 directory f/ is designed to be placed in gcc/ so that it becomes the subdirectory gcc/f/. g77 is distributed as g77-someversion/f/ so that unpacking the g77 distribution is done in the normal GNU way, resulting in a directory having the version number in the name. However, to build g77, the g77 distribution must be merged with an appropriate gcc distribution, normally in a gcc directory, before configuring, building, and installing g77. Applying g77 patches in the form of .diff files is done by typing "patch -p1 -d gcc" (where gcc/f/ is the active version). That is, g77 patches are distributed in the same form, and at the same directory level, as patches to the gcc distribution. gcc/f/ has text files that document the Fortran compiler, source files for the GNU Fortran Front End (FFE), and some other stuff. gcc/f/gbe/ has patch files for various versions of gcc, primarily needed to patch the GNU compiler Back End (GBE) to fix and improve it for use with g77. If a patch file exists for the version of gcc you want to build along with g77, you MUST apply the patch before building g77 with that version or g77 will not build or work properly.* * Read gcc/f/gbe/README for more information. gcc/f/runtime/ contains the run-time libraries for the f2c program, also used by g77, and referred to as libf2c (though libf2c is really a combination of two distinct libraries, libF77 and libI77 -- in g77, this distinction is not made). This separate subdirectory is not part of the program g77, just distributed with it. Some new files have been added to this subdirectory and some minor changes made to the files contained therein, to fix some bugs and facilitate automatic configuration, building, and installation of libf2c for use by g77 users. See gcc/f/runtime/README for more information. gcc/f/BUGS lists some important bugs known to be in g77. Or: info -f gcc/f/g77.info -n "Actual Bugs" gcc/f/ChangeLog lists recent changes to g77 internals. gcc/f/INSTALL describes how to build and install GNU Fortran. Or: info -f gcc/f/g77.info -n Installation gcc/f/NEWS contains the per-release changes (not just user-visible ones seen in gcc/f/DOC) listed in the ~fortran/.plan file. Or: info -f gcc/f/g77.info -n News * Read gcc/f/BUGS, gcc/f/INSTALL, and gcc/f/NEWS at the very least! All users of g77 (not just installers) should read gcc/f/g77.info* as well, using the "more" command if the "info" command is unavailable or they aren't used to using it. If you want to get into the FFE code, which lives entirely in gcc/f/, here are a few clues. The file g77.c is the stand-alone source file for the `g77' command driver only -- this just invokes the `gcc' command, so it has nothing to do with the rest of the code in g77. Most of the code ends up in an executable named `f771', which does the actual compiling, so it has the FFE merged with the gcc back end. The file parse.c is the source file for main() for a stand-alone FFE and yyparse() for f771. (Stand-alone building of the FFE doesn't work these days.) The file top.c contains the top-level FFE function ffe_file and it (along with top.h) define all ffe_[a-z].*, ffe[A-Z].*, and FFE_[A-Za-z].* symbols. The file fini.c is a main() program that is used when building the FFE to generate C header and source files for recognizing keywords. The files malloc.c and malloc.h comprise a memory manager that defines all malloc_[a-z].*, malloc[A-Z].*, and MALLOC_[A-Za-z].* symbols. All other modules named are comprised of all files named *. and define all ffe_[a-z].*, ffe[A-Z].*, and FFE_[A-Za-z].* symbols. If you understand all this, congratulations -- it's easier for me to remember how it works than to type in these grep patterns (such as they are). But it does make it easy to find where a symbol is defined -- for example, the symbol "ffexyz_set_something" would be defined in xyz.h and implemented there (if it's a macro) or in xyz.c. The "porting" files of note currently are: proj.h, which defines the "language" used by all the other source files (the language being Standard C plus some useful things like ARRAY_SIZE and such) -- change this file when you find your system doesn't properly define a Standard C macro or function, for example; target.h and target.c, which describe the target machine in terms of what data types are supported, how they are denoted (what C type does an INTEGER*8 map to, for example), how to convert between them, and so on (though as of 0.5.3, more and more of this information is being dynamically configured by ffecom_init_0); com.h and com.c, which interface to the target back end (currently only FFE stand-alone and the GBE); ste.c, which contains code for implementing recognized executable statements in the target back end (again currently either FFE or GBE); src.h and src.c, which describe information on the format(s) of source files (like whether they are never to be processed as case-insensitive with regard to Fortran keywords); and proj.c, which contains whatever code is needed to support the language defined by proj.h. If you want to debug the f771 executable, for example if it crashes, note that the global variables "lineno" and "input_filename" are set to reflect the current line being read by the lexer during the first-pass analysis of a program unit and to reflect the current line being processed during the second-pass compilation of a program unit. If an invocation of the function ffestd_exec_end() is on the stack, the compiler is in the second pass, otherwise it is in the first. (This information might help you reduce a test case and/or work around a bug in g77 until a fix is available.) Any questions or comments on these topics, email fortran@gnu.ai.mit.edu.