Re: backwards incompatibility

[Jerry DeLisle <jvdelisle@charter.net>]

On 03/13/2018 08:14 AM, Dave Love wrote:
> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
> 
>> Hi Dave,
>>
>>> It's quite a pain for supporting research systems that the gfortran
>>> module format changes incompatibly with every (?) new version.
>>
>> A lot of releases, yes. The problem is that we use a lot of positional
>> parameters in the files.
>>
>> I have given a little thought of how to get around that by using some
>> sort of keyword-value scheme, which by definition are almost infinitely
>> extensible.
>>
>> Another possibility would be to write out INTERFACE blocks as *.mod
>> files, which could then be re-read and re-parsed.
>>
>> Just two problems: To a) get the design right, and b) get the
>> implementation right.  This would take a lot of effort, and the
>> manpower simplfy isn't there (and it hasn't figured high on the
>> list of priorities).
>>
>> Of course, volunteers are always welcome.
> 
> The immediate interest is in whether it's possible to write translations
> of old .mods to newer formats to solve the existing issues, but that
> presumably only makes sense if you can reliably mix code compiled with
> old and new compiler versions.  I'll see how far I can get with module.c
> when I have a chance, thanks.
> 

It would be an order of magnitude easier and take less time if you just 
recompiled all of your sources.  I hope you use make or cmake or at 
least some build scripting and let it run overnight.  Or, does it take a 
week or two?

Regards,

Jerry