[Plplot-devel] F95 bindings

[Andrew R. <and...@us...>]

Alan,

Makefile problem for f95 examples now fixed - it was just trying to
use F77 rather than FC to compile and then linking with the f77
version of the plplot libraries.

All examples now build and run for me using gfortran, except for
example 14. It appears the lnblnk intrinsic is missing from my version
of gfortran.

Both ifort and pgf90 fail to build the bindings (at least the versions 
I have) because they do not recognise the .f95 file extension. They
use .f90 for free-form Fortran 90 and 95 files. Doesn't even try to
compile the code. I can't at the moment see how to force the compile
with an unknown file extension. What do other compilers do? Is .f95
"standard" in any way? I notice the Sun f95 compiler supports .f90,
.f95 and even .f03. The latest Portland compilers also support .f95,
just not the version I have. I think the latest intel compilers I have
access to (v9.0) still only use .f90.

In light of the complications with f95 I propose that for the upcoming 
release we 

1) Disable f95 bindings by default.
2) Provide information in the README telling interested users to
ensure F77 and FC are equal if they want to enable it. 

This way we don't accidentally break anything for users who have an
existing F95 compiler available, perhaps a commercial one, but who
don't want to experiment with the new bindings.

We can then try to fix the build problems properly with the new
libtool when it arrives.

Andrew