[SciPy-Dev] Fortran cleanup advice?

[David Cournapeau]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 3:01 AM, Pauli Virtanen <pav+sp at iki.fi> wrote:
> Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:29:35 +0800, Ralf Gommers wrote:
>> Most warnings are from Fortran code, I count six types (examples at end
>> of mail):
>> 1. Nonconforming tab character. This one's straightforward, change tabs
>> to spaces.
>> 2. Unused variable.
>> 3. Obsolete ASSIGN statement.
>> 4. Label defined but not used.
>> 5. Obsolete assigned GOTO statement
>> 6. 'foo' uninitialized.
>
> I'm not sure whether fixing these warnings pays off:

agreed - although I think removing the warnings is by itself a worthy
goal, as it effectively renders warnings useless ATM (since there are
so many false alarms). The solution is to compile those fortran
libraries differently - adding maybe an option to build_clib to
disable warnings or something.

>
> a) I doubt fixing these warnings will help us spot any bugs. Most of the
>   offending code is likely upstream code (= ancient Fortran libraries),
>   and for the most part, they are solid.

I think ralf's point is that when you have many false alarms, the
legitimate ones are ignored.

David