https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=82215
--- Comment #5 from Lee Busby <busby1 at llnl dot gov> --- Thank you very much for reading my report, Mr. Koenig. I probably should have pulled out footnote #6 as an explicit comment here, as it comes closest to my own first guess at a "feature request". As you have seen, the "feature request", such as it is, is pretty simple. Gfortran already has all the capabilities needed -- indeed, my report demonstrates a working production scale system, so why is anything needed at all? The only irreplaceable component of the two pass system is the -fsyntax-only flag. That allows us to build all the dependencies quickly, then do the heavy work (code generation) in parallel. So at a bare minimum, my "feature request" would be to add a note to the documentation that -fsyntax-only also, as a side effect, generates the .mod files. There is no need to say anything about two pass compiling. Going on to add -fmodule-files=no would be a nice step that makes the user's intention more obvious, and it might avoid the temporary subdirectory that I resort to in the current pass2. If you did add that option, then also adding -fobject-files=no as, basically, a synonym for -fsyntax-only might be an orthogonal addition to the command line interface. On the third point, putting the source file path into the module file, I agree that it could well be problematic, and perhaps best left alone. There are several ways for practical build systems to match an object file with its proper source file. Basically, that's it. I'm not trying to promote two pass compiling as an alternative to any other uses of the language or compiler. My technical report surprised me, to tell the truth. It was very easy to set up the two pass system for Miranda, and it is extraordinarily effective. The key mental shift for me was to see that a fortran compiler is a tool for making module files and object files: Usually that happens both at once, but in some situations, it can be much better to do them one at a time. I would therefore like to see (all) fortran compilers gain the flexibility to generate modules and objects one at a time. I consider the gfortran team to be something of a thought leader in showing how the tool can be used, so I am grateful for your ideas and insights about which, if any, new features might be best. Thank you.
