Intel Fortran 2021.2 released

[Ron_Green]

The Intel(R) oneAPI HPC Toolkit version 2021.2 released today.  This toolkit contains both:

Intel® Fortran Compiler Classic (IFORT)

Intel® Fortran Compiler(Beta): (IFX)

WE LISTENED:

Along with many bug fixes, probably the biggest and best change in the 2021.2 HPC Toolkit is the inclusion of the Intel debugger in the HPC Toolkit**.

So if you only want Intel's Fortran compiler and a Fortran-aware debugger, you now only have to download the HPC Toolkit.  You will now automatically get our Fortran FFE debugger integration into Microsoft Visual Studio* 2019 or 2017 on Windows, and gdb-oneapi on Linux.

The HPC Toolkit also includes Intel® C++ Compiler Classic (ICC).

The Base Toolkit is only needed if you want MKL, or perhaps Vtune or Advisor tools, or the Intel® oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler.

Users with active support can download this update release on The Intel Registration Center (IRC)

** The Intel(R) Fortran Compiler Classic for macOS does not include an Intel-supplied debugger.

[FortranFan]

@Ron_Green ,

Mega kudos to you and all of the Intel Fortran team for tremendous advance with this 2021.2 Release, please keep up the great effort - the Fortran Community globally needs this and is helped by this!

Please consider someone from Intel team, either you or a colleague, to also post this at the usenet and the Discourse site:

comp.lang.fortran

https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/

[JohnNichols]

It was a really simple install - took about an hour.  Good job.

[JohnNichols]

Backus was also some kind of genius, inventing Fortran to enhance the productivity of programmers who were struggling with machine language.

This quote comes from comp language disc. 

I would suggest an alternative, he was 27 and wanted to be able to code faster then machine language would allow, the fact that it helped others was nice.  You see the same thing in LISP programs, the basic commands are spartan and terribly named, car, cdr etc, but you can quickly build a library on top and write English like programs allowing for the ().  You can read a LISP program easily. 

Some things Fortran is really good at -- water supply models, because it is fast, but the code is easy to read, but not as easy as LISP. 

I was playing with some C# in VS 2019 and the program makes recommendations on improving the code, so I tried out a short sample and in 3 simple changes I could not read the code in any sensible fashion.  But I need C# for the sensors and drawing and connecting to mySQL.  

Apparently the inventor of java said nasty things that C# was a poor insecure Java, but these days it is a poor secure Fortran with issues and a few nice features I wish Fortran had.  

But one thing I know, life is to short to read the comp.fortran.discourse -- those people are fanatics, I prefer the gentle souls here who remind me of a tea drinking bunch of old Englishmen.  

But when we move engineering education in some fields from the 1970s it will be good.

[andrew_4619]

Is "Corrections to reported problems" just install problem fixes or are there any language fixes in the classic compiler? 

[Ron_Green]

you will find Debugger fixes, which we all agree are were much needed and overdue.  And yes, IFORT language fixes for broken features ( PDTs improvements, various 2018 things we were doing wrong ). Lots of IFX improvements for the Beta new compiler.

And Install fixes - again, the big one is that the HPC Toolkit now has the Fortran compilers AND a 'silent' component for the debugger so that IF you install a compiler YOU WILL get the debugger.  We agreed that if you get a compiler you get a debugger. 

[Steve_Lionel]

... but not run-time DLLs so that you can run applications outside of the development environment.

[JohnNichols]

Just a  bit critical as we had it in MS 3.31/ 

[Ron_Green]

the RT libs are still in discussion.  We've had far more complaints about download package sizes than we have for these runtime libs.  So this is still under consideration for a future update.

[andrew_4619]

That seem like a strange one. I suspect the only reason there are few complaints about the missing RT is that people have an older RT  from a previous install. Without that it is rather a significant problem that requires additional downloads anyway.   I don't recall the installers taking more than a handful of minutes to download that was not a problem. Wasting  part of my life hunting the RT is more of a problem IMO. Just my opinions.

[NSwindale]

Does it integrate with Visual Studio? Is QuickWin still supported?

[JohnNichols]

yes - squared

[NSwindale]

Sounds good. So I should be able to:

1. Leave Visual Studio 2017 community as is

2. uninstall previous Intel Parallel Studio compiler

3. install w_HPCKit_p_2021.2.0.2901_offline.exe

and I should be good to go with all my previous Visual Studio QuickWin and other project files etc.? Minus the various quickwin issues?

[Steve_Lionel]

Yes. Step 2 is optional. I'd also recommend installing the Windows redistributable "Runtime Version" from Intel® oneAPI standalone component installation files

[JohnNichols]

Leave Visual Studio 2017 community as is

== VS 2019 Preview has a lot of nice new features and it co-exists with 2017. 

[NSwindale]

Thank you both for the prompt replies. 

[j0e]

That's almost there for me, but I use MKL, Vtune and sometimes Advisor, so it sounds like I still need to get the Base Toolkit too then?

[Steve_Lionel]

Yes, you will need the Base toolkit for those. Keep in mind that you can select which components you want to install - you don't have to install the whole thing.

[j0e]

thanks for the fast response Dr. Fortran!

[TruongDang]

I’m so impressed by Intel debugger integrated in Visual Studio. It helped me easily debug my Fortran code which intesively use Fortran pointer technique. I used to debug using GDB integrated in CodeBlocks IDE but it is not as good as Intel debugger. Currently I work mainly with Java and IntelliJ IDEA. One thing that I really surprise is that Intel debugger can somehow enhance production similar to IntelliJ debugger. I used to be a CFD code developer and Fortran coding was my first job. At that time when using Fortran 2003’s features, I had to get rid of the Compaq Visual Fortran’s debugger and used GDB debugger integrated in Code::Blocks.

Many thanks to the Intel team.