Fortran newsletter: May 2020

May 01, 2020

Authors: Milan Curcic

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Welcome to the first monthly Fortran newsletter. It will come out on the first calendar day of every month, detailing Fortran news from the previous month.

This website
Standard Library
Package Manager
WG5 Convenor candidates
Events
Who’s hiring?

This website

If you came to this newsletter from elsewhere, welcome to the new Fortran website. We built this site mid-April and hope for it to be the home of Fortran on the internet, which traditionally there hasn’t been any to date. Look around and let us know if you have any suggestions for improvement. Specifically, Learn and Packages are the pages that we’ll be focusing on in the coming months. Please help us make them better!

Standard Library

Here’s what’s new in Fortran Standard Library:

#172 New function cov in the stdlib_experimental_stats module to compute covariance of array elements. Read the full specification here.
#168 Specify recommended order of attributes for dummy arguments in the Stdlib style guide.
#173 Minor bug fix.
#170 WIP: Addition of diag, eye, and trace functions to make working with matrices easier.

Package Manager

In the past month we’ve seen the first working implementation of the Fortran Package Manager (FPM). Specifically:

FPM supports three commands:
- fpm build–compiles and links your application and/or library.
- fpm test–runs tests if your package has any test programs.
- fpm run–runs the application if your package has an executable program.
FPM can build an executable program, a library, or a combination of both.
Currently only gfortran is supported as the compiler backend. FPM will suport other compilers soon.

Read the FPM packaging guide to learn how to build your package with FPM.

FPM is still in very early development, and we need as much help as we can get. Here’s how you can help today:

Try to use it. Does it work? No? Let us know!
Browse the open issues and see if you can help implement any fixes or features.
Adapt your Fortran package for FPM.
Improve the documentation.

The short term goal of FPM is to make development and installation of Fortran packages with dependencies easier. Its long term goal is to build a rich and decentralized ecosystem of Fortran packages and create a healthy environment in which new open source Fortran projects are created and published with ease.

WG5 Convenor candidates

Last month was also the deadline for the WG5 convenor candidates to apply for the next 3-year term (2021-2024). There are two candidates:

Steve Lionel, who is also the current WG5 convenor, announced running for another term. Read Steve’s post about how he has guided the standardization process over the past three years and his direction for the future.
Ondřej Čertík has also announced announced to run for the WG5 convenor. Read Ondřej’s announcement and platform that detail current issues with Fortran language development and how to overcome them going forward.

Events