Eclipse, Java and Fortran

[Robert_T_2]

Upgrading from VB6 to VB2008 involves a complete rewrite of all of our VB code. Given that such is a non-trivial task we are investigating using JAVA or C++ to replace the VB GUI in our applications. Visual Studio 2008 does not really support JAVA. We have several programmers who are enamored with ECLIPSE as a JAVA development platform. Does anyone have any experience using INTEL FORTRAN on Windows in Eclipse?

We are hoping that such an environment might allow us a little more O/S and platform independence.

[ArturGuzik]

Hi,

did you see Photran? I did some trials some time ago, around its version 4.0. And experience was not that encouraging (on Windows), comparing to that within VS. At that time. Now they reached version 5.0, so probably it's far better.

Also a lot depends on how Java (GUI) interacts with Fortran (exe, dll ?). I'm not sure whether it will be possible to debug them interactively, what you (very nicely) do inside VS with .Net and IF codes. I know that Refactoring is far better handled in Photran, although, as far I can remember I saw Tim (????) or somebody's else post somewhere raising issue of memory for doing it (if I'm not mistaken).

One of the issues I recall was the modules dependency. The bottom line is that Photran/Eclipse just runs a makefile for you. If you have a huge application with many modules, then sometimes is a challenge.

A.

[Robert_T_2]

I haveinstalled photran but since at the time it did not work properly with our available FORTRAN compiler, we did not go any further.

Since there is a mechanism to interact between JAVA and C/C++ we know that we can interact with FORTRAN. Wrapper routines can always be written.

Is the recommendation that the two be treated as separate projects, one in eclipse and on in VS? I'm trying to limit the number different "cultures" in-house.

We upgraded recently from VS6 and Digital/Compaq FORTRAN 6.6B to the VS2008 and Intel FORTRAN. While FORTRAN only projects work well in VS2008, we have not learned how mix C/C++ and FORTRAN in the same project as was possible in VS6.

We now have separate projects, a C/C++ and FORTRAN. VB had to be aseparate projectusing aspecialIDE with-in the VS harness. To rebuild any application that uses VB requires at least 3 projects, VB, C/C++ and FORTRAN. Since these are very complex applications, we have many pojects that create libraries, dll's, and .exe's. A great deal of effort is spent keeping the code structured, sharing tool kits (libraries/dll's) across projects.

I am under the impression that on LINUX/UNIX FORTRAN is supported by INTEL with-in eclipse. Is this correct? Could such support also be made available on Windows?

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Intel's support for Eclipse is limited to C++ on Linux.

[ArturGuzik]

Since there is a mechanism to interact between JAVA and C/C++ we know that we can interact with FORTRAN. Wrapper routines can always be written.

That's no problem. I wrote, that I wasn't sure that you could debug them both (together) the way you do .Net hosted projects.

And with very complex dependencies, I'm also not sure you have something which will produce your makefile (and order of modules compilation) automatically. For bigger projects, I must admit, I copy order of compilations from VS and then create makefile for Linux version.

So if you already have VB, then making (upgrading) to .Net version shouldn't be that difficult. With "Debug unmanaged code" option on, you really don't care how many projects (VB, Fortran, C++) you have in your solution, you can step in from VB.Net into your Fortran dll etc. And, as Steve wrote, you have no support for Eclipse-integration.

On the other hand, for writing code, Photran seems to have much better browsing, code-completion (?) capabilities than those available inside VS.

A.

[johnreadey]

Are you interested in building cross platform applications (i.e. Windows & Linux), or just for Windows?

If you are just targeting Windows, I'd think VB.Net + Fortran would be the mostconvenient& best supportedenvironment.

If want to be able to build GUI apps for both Linux & Windows, take a look at the Qt toolkit from trolltech. Though compared with VB, it's probably a bit more work to create the UI.

John

[Robert_T_2]

Change for the sake of change is a waste of time and money. Microsoft is now three or more api's removed from VB6 and VS6. The new VB adds little that enhances our applications. We are more concerned with performance and functionality than with window dressing and the web.

[djpinkster]

If you're going to rewrite your VB codebase anyway and have no intentions to leave the Windows platform I would strongly suggest migrating to C#. Language-wise it's much more consistent than Vb.net (which carries a lot of weird Vb history), similar to Java (but more powerful) and you will get native Windows look-and-feel applications (still a problem with Java GUI's). Plus integration of Fortran and any .Net language is easier than Java<>Fortran.

I've worked with several versions of Photran and could not get any one of them (including 5.0) to work with Intel Visual Fortran. The idea of Photran is nice, but it's no match for the Visual Studio IDE yet. Which is unfortunate, I would like to add, since I'm a daily user of Eclipse and believe that it's a much more powerful IDE than VS. However, Photran just doesn't deliver in terms of stability and integration with IVF.