How to Setup and Configure an Open Source Fortran Development Environment on Windows.docxVIP

How to Setup and Configure an Open Source Fortran Development Environment on Windows Jihuan TianSaturday, December 24, 2011 We must have already been familiar with proprietary Fortran programming environments, for example, Compaq Visual Fortran IDE (which is actually a combination of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 6 IDE and Compaq’s Fortran compiler along with commercial numerical libraries like IMSL by Visual Numerics and libraries for developing Windows GUI programs. Visual Studio 2005 or above and integrated Intel Fortran compiler. Of course, these tools are so convenient that we almost have no time cost on mastering them. However, they may lead you to the following traps: The operations, like “creating a project”, “pressing a button to compile and debug”, will hide the basic and important knowledge about how to transform the source code into a final executable program and deprive you of the valuable chance to learn more advanced topics of knowledge. For a complex project structure containing many test cases, libraries and programs to be compiled and debugged, the convenience and “advantage” of IDE fade away and furthermore, IDE would probably be incapable of such a formidable situation. Windows operating system is still not professional and resource-saving enough for a serious scientific high performance computing. Therefore, transplant of the project to Linux or UNIX-like systems may be requisite. However, your MS Studio projects can’t be directly and easily compiled on any other platforms except Windows. Because we haven’t bought all those commercial tools (even a free Fortran compiler is difficult to find) and neither do many other people, it is almost impossible to publish and distribute the code to the public. The setup of an open source development environment on Windows is quite easy as long as you have a basic knowledge or a little experience about programming under Linux environment. At present, to my personal knowledge, two solutions are available: gcc+gdb