On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 1:49 PM, Ed Smith-Rowland <3dw...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 10/26/2016 01:17 PM, Will Hawkins wrote: >> >> On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Ian Lance Taylor <i...@google.com> wrote: >>> >>> On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 9:31 AM, Will Hawkins <wh...@virginia.edu> wrote: >>>> >>>> Thank you for your response! I don't think that there has to be >>>> controversy to be interesting. Obviously that split/reunification was >>>> important, but I think that there might even be some value in >>>> documenting the minutia of the project's growth. In other words, what >>>> was the process for incorporating each new version of the C++ >>>> standard? Who and why did GCC start a frontend for X language? Things >>>> like that. >>> >>> It is easier to answer specific questions. >>> >>> There have always been GCC developers that have tracked the evolution >>> of C++. The first C++ standard was of course in 1998, at which point >>> the language was over 10 years old, so there were a lot of C++ >>> language changes before then. GCC has generally acquired new language >>> features as they were being adopted into the standard, usually >>> controlled by options like the current -std=c++1z. This of course >>> means that the new features have shifted as the standard has shifted, >>> but as far as I know that hasn't happened too often. >>> >>> GCC started as a C compiler. The C++ frontend was started by Michael >>> Tiemann around 1987 or so. It started as a patch and was later >>> incorporated into the mainline. >>> >>> The Objective C frontend was started at NeXT. They originally >>> intended to keep it proprietary, but when they understood that the GPL >>> made that impossible they contributed it back. I forget when the >>> Objective C++ frontend came in. >>> >>> Cygnus Support developed the Chill and, later, Java frontends. The >>> Chill frontend was removed later, and in fact the Java frontend was >>> removed just recently. >>> >>> As I recall Fortran was a hobbyist project that eventually made it in. >>> There were two competing forks, I think. I don't remember too much >>> about that off the top of my head. > > There was a split between what would become gfortran and what I still think > is g95 (www.g95.org). > gfortran was stood up at gcc-4.0 I think. The earlier g77 front end was > just too difficult to repair. > Also, Fortran-90, 95 were out with many useful changes and people wanted to > add them to a new codebase. > The author of g95 developed a pure GPL (not library LGPL version of the > Fortran runtime.) This was the split. > This was in mid 2000 or so. > > I am a numerics geek. The fact that gcc has both C++ and Fortran in a > single kit is very important to me. > I think it maybe one of the last systems that has both. Certainly it is the > only Free suite that does. > > The Fortran developers* have kept up rather aggressively with Fortran-95, > 2000, 2008 and TRs. > * my contributions are exclusively to C++, and the C++ linrary.
Craig Burley has a website with some history about the G77 project: http://www.kilmnj.com/g77/ I believe that he initially asked for feedback at the beginning of the Fortran project if he should focus on Fortran 77 or the early Fortran 90/95 standard. At the time, there was little adoption of / conversion to Fortran 90, so the overwhelming response was Fortran 77, with the implicit assumption that a fully conformant compiler would appear the next month. By the time g77 was generally usable, Fortran 90/95 was gaining a lot of traction. - David
