On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 16:38 +0200, Thomas Orgis wrote:
> Java got a defined binary format, but somehow it did not encounter to
> C++ and Fortran 90 designers to care about interoperability of code.
>
F90 source code is portable (as long as it is standard conforming and
you have a decent compiler...)
> > them into /usr/lib/modules or so. if you want to use the intel
> > compilers than you will need to compile netcdf yourself
>
> Basically this means I need to include the NetCDF library into my
> model source. When there is no reliable external source to use, this
> dependency needs to be contained in my sources. To be sensible, only
> the part wrapping over the C library should be needed -- since you
> usually _can_ rely on the C library to work. And it would somehow be
> against the whole purpose of the NetCDF format and library to have a
> different copy of the whole thing in each software package that is
> using it.
>
I wouldn't do that. Just include instructions on how the get the
library. It's just like any other fortran lib. Are you going to
distribute your code? If it is only in-house than you could include
netCDF in your built. However, chances are that others will find it
useful as well. If the library needs to be available on a number of
machines, just compile it and stick it on a network share.
> Now, perhaps that mess with Fortran libraries could be cleaned up when
> there is a nice package of the Fortran wrapper part (for use with
> NetCDF C API from some version up) that easily can be integrated in
> custom build systems (in an automated way).
> One should not rely on autoconf/make for that sub-package -- it should
> be enough to name the C API version to support, since all the platform
> specific details are handled in the C library (or not?).
>
> Would such an "educated header" package be feasible? I really think
> that this would be the correct approach, faced with the inconsistency
> of fortran runtime systems. Perhaps it would also work as an include
> file like the F77 interface, so that you'd have such a file in your
> source:
>
the problem is that the module file format is not standardised. I think
this is one of the greatest omissions of the Fortran standard. But then
different compilers produce incompatible object codes anyway. So it
wouldn't be that helpful. I guess the reason why it works for C binaries
(on Linux) is that they are so fundamental that if different compilers
were incompatible you would need to recompile the entire stack.
The trick is to install fortran libraries into compiler-arch dependent
locations.
>
> > BTW, I am
> > assuming you are using Linux or some other Unix like OS.
>
> Heck, what else? ;-)
just making sure
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