New visual fortran user

[rfengineer55]

I just bought Inte's Fortran compiler and installed it yesterday. Not too happy with it because of the steep learning curve.

I opened up a new project in Visual Studio 2008 and accepted the default project name console1 and it had some prewritten code "hello world" or some such thing. I compiled it and a DOS window popped p and I saw the "Hello world" character string with an invite tohit anyn key to continue. OK, this tells me that the compiler is working.

I have some legacy Fortran programs that were written in VMS Fortran that I want to produce an executable from. Two questions -

First, where do I copy my Legacy source file to? Where does it go EXACTLT?

Second, I have been told that the Intel compiler can be set up to use VMS extensions, but nobody so far seems to want to, or is able to, tell me how to do that. If it can be done, How exactly do you set up the compiler or Visual studio to use VMS extensions?

If you want to refer me to the docuentation, that's fine. Please pass along page numbers.

I have gone over the documentation and if the information is contained therein, I missed it/can't find it. I'm not at all pleased with the documentation because of the lack of the "How do I" formatted help. This is only my opinion; hopefully your opinion is much more favorable and mine will become better once I get this very expensive software doing something that's woth the cost.

Jeff Glass, BSEE CSRE
Chief Engineer
Northern Illinois University

[Jugoslav_Dujic]

Well, the "steep learning curve" surely is due to Microsoft Visual Studio, which is a huge and very universal (or bloated, depending on the viewpoint) development environment, whose development spans some 20 years and has some 6-7 generations. Many people are used to it by now, but I can understand your frustration as a newcomer.

To create a new project from existing sources, select File/New/Project..., select "Intel/Console Application", then "Empty project". In the boxes below, select the project name of your future .exe (e.g. Foo), and the directory where it will reside (e.g. C:\Users\Jeff\Code). As result, you will get a directory C:\Users\Jeff\Code\Foo, with files Foo.vfproj (your project file) and Foo.sln (the solution file).

Next, copy your .f/.for files into the Foo directory. You might create a subdirectory "Source" to keep things neater. To tell the IDE that they should be compiled, right-click on project node (blue F-box) in the solution view, select "Add/Existing item", browse for your source files. You can open them by double-clicking them. Now you got the project set up.

To build the Foo.exe, select Build/Build Solution (Ctrl+Shift+B or F7); the compiler output is given in the "Output" pane at the bottom. If successful, the .exe is created in ...\Foo\Debug\Foo.exe. You can run it from Visual Studio from "Debug" menu (Ctrl+F5 or F5). Note that the default working directory is C:\Users\Jeff\Code\Foo (rather than ...\Debug) so place your input files there, if any.

Project settings (compiler options) are accessed by Project\Foo Properties... menu, or by right-clicking the blue node. Most important options are under "Fortran" and "Linker" groups. There is "Enable VMS Compatibility" switch under Fortran\Compatibility group, which you will probably want to set to "Yes" (well, at least unless the project builds and runs without it).

I suppose that was a crash course...

[anthonyrichards]

..and, if you want to execute without debugging, the option to 'start without debugging' is obtained using CTRL+F5 (Runnig with the Debugger is F5). Frustratingly, this appears not to be available under the DEBUG menu in the default setup of Visual Studio (I have 2005 version), but it can be added by selecting TOOLS..Customize.. and in the COMMANDS window of the tabbed dialog select 'DEBUG' in the left-hand 'Categories' pane then in the right hand pane scroll down to 'Start Without Debugging'. Then close the dialog. This option should then be available under the 'DEBUG' menu item from henceforth.

[TimP]

Apparently, you consider /Qsave and /Qzero options to be in the category of "VMS extensions." As the source code in question was written 8 years after VAX Fortran introduced full support for SAVE, we can't guess that part of your intentions. The source uses a bewildering combination of IMPLICIT NONE in some subroutines with default typing and initialization elsewhere, along with abuse of more IBM360 extensions than I've ever seen, so it doesn't conform to a consistent dialect.
You said elsewhere that you weren't concerned about successful run time behavior to the extent that you would provide a full set of files; requirement for /Qsave and /Qzero doesn't arise until you attempt to run.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

I've closed this duplicate thread - please continue here.