Conference turris::fortran

1321.0. "Some initial comments on Visual Fortran" by SUBPAC::FARICELLI () Fri May 30 1997 10:53

   As some of you know, I plunked down a wad of my own cash for MS Visual C++
   and Digital Fortran for my PC at home. I got it loaded yesterday,
   and already have a few comments/questions.

   1) It was not obvious how to delete a file from a project.
      You have to click on the file to highlight it, then
      press the delete key (maybe there is some other way, but the help
      for Developer Studio seems a bit lacking -- but hey, I've only been
      able to play with it a few hours). Since there is a popup menu item
      for "add file", why not one for "delete file"?

   2) It's nice to see that the builder tool understands Fortran code,
      so it can figure out dependencies. But it seems like it always wanted
      to compile the first file in my project. Anyone else see this?

   3) I needed to access some subroutines in the portability library.
      The suggested way to do this is to add the statement "USE DFPORT"
      before any declarations (even IMPLICIT NONE) or executable statements
      (do I have this right?? It would be nicer if I could hide this
      system depedency inside another include file).

      When this file was compiled, I got diagnostic about not being able
      to open dfport.mod (the .mod part got split to another line, see next
      comment). But (I think) it actually did read those files,
      because I got other compiler diagnostics that indicated I had
      redeclared those portability functions.

   4) Compiler diagnostics sometimes seem to get "split". For example,
      I got several warnings about not being able to open dfport (each from
      a USE statement), like this (sorry this is from memory)

... line (24) .... can't find DFPORT
... line (56) .... can't find DFPORT
... line (128) .... can't find DFPORT
.mod
.mod
.mod

   Does this sound familiar?

   -- More later --

   -- John Faricelli

Yes, I agree that removing a file from a project is not intuitive.  The
problem is that the default toolbar doesn't include a Delete button (X).  You
can use Tools..Customize to drag the Delete button to the toolbar.  Drag the
New button up there while you're at it.

I don't understand your 2) complaint.

USE statements must appear before any other declarations (after IMPLICIT) -
if you want to put it in an INCLUDE file, that's fine.

I often find I need to do an "Update all dependencies" when starting a new
project.

I haven't seen the ".mod" split to a separate line as you show.  Can you come
up with a small reproducible example?

				Steve

  I tried this morning to reproduct the error messages I was getting
  from the file that does a "USE DFPORT", but I could not.

  It was pretty frustrating, since when I started, the split error messages
  were still in the output window of Visual Studio when I restarted it.
  I tried 1) asking for a compile of that file and 2) deleting the object file
  and asking for a complete build. Both completed without error messages.

  -- John Faricelli

I have seen "new" projects give strange error messages, including compiler
bugchecks, on the first compilation.  Usually a recompilation or doing an
"update all dependencies" makes the problem disappear forever.  I have never
been able to reproduce this at will.

					Steve