[MPI3 Fortran] Should new features be retrofitted to Fortran 77bindings?

[Jeff Squyres]

To be absolutely clear on this point: we're not talking about abondoning the F77 bindings, or even F77 users.  We're talking about *new* MPI-3 features that might have difficulty with F77 bindings.  For such cases, should we just punt and say "this new MPI-3 feature is only available in the F2003 bindings"?

Like Craig, I think that this might be a reasonable position: if you want to use the newest, latest, greatest stuff, you need to upgrade to the F2003 bindings.  

Don't forget that we have full interop between the F77 and F2003 bindings (being able to convert handles back and forth), so even if someone has a huge legacy F77 code, they can write one subroutine with "use mpi3" and still have it work properly with the rest of their MPI F77 code.



On Dec 11, 2009, at 3:25 PM, Craig Rasmussen wrote:

> Jeff raised an interesting question with me.  Should new features that are being considered for MPI-3 be retrofitted if possible for Fortran 77 codes?  Some users might say yes as they never intend to use modern Fortran features.  On the other hand, F77 is over 30 years old and so perhaps we should move on and not put support (money) into adding new features.
> 
> The new Fortran MPI-3 bindings will allow users to link to codes using F77 bindings so if users want new bindings they only have
> to use MPI3 locally.
> 
> -craig
> 
> 
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-- 
Jeff Squyres
jsquyres at cisco.com