Re: apple silicon fortran

[Jerry DeLisle <jvdelisle2@gmail.com>]

On 1/6/21 11:38 AM, James Secan via Fortran wrote:
> Thanks - I had already begun to suspect I’ll need to hold off a bit on getting an Apple Silicon machine, and this confirms it.  I need gfortran to be working on whatever hardware I’m using.
>
> Jim
>
That may be the wise approach.  Depending on how many users it may be 
possible to get an unoffcial build if the branch gets far enough a 
long.  There was a time when we were doing daily or weekly builds for 
odd ducks like Cygwin on Windows.  This was back at the initial phases 
of the F95 compiler.

One of the big problems is not having hardware for us to test on. I 
expect Iain and some the gcc other gcc gurus may have this access sooner 
than the "Fortraners". If the OS is fairly compliant to standards, the 
runtime libraries for gfortran should mostly work, its the nuances and 
corner cases that catch us off guard usually.

It would be helpful if we somehow could get an apple on silicon machine 
tied into the gcc compile farm.  I do not know how well that would work 
if it is only laptops, it would be on 24/7, but I expect it could 
support a few users well enough to allow developers to start working 
with it and seeing the problems.

Another thought, is there some sort of virtual machine or emulator that 
could be used on other machines, but apple is usually very closed about 
such things.

Regards,

Jerry