Fort vs Other Open Source Compilers

Fort vs Flang

Pro’s of Flang vs Fort:

• Much more complete Fortran support (though less than that of GNU Fortran)

Pro’s of Fort vs Flang:

• Fort, just like Clang, is designed to be easily understandable; it has virtually no learning curve for developers familiar with LLVM or Clang
• Fort implements its own compilation pipeline (rather than piggy-backing on Clang) which reduces complexity of the project and allows for faster builds
• Fort compiles against LLVM components and produces LLVM IR in memory, which allows catching many of potential IR issues at compile time
• Fort follows LLVM release lifecycle from get-go
• Fort supports all LLVM targets
• Flang emits LLVM IR as text, which is error-prone and often forces to check output only at runtime
• Fort uses LLVM diagnostics
• Tooling API

Note: it was recently announced that Nvidia is undertaking some form of a rewrite of Flang. Stay tuned for updates to the comparison.

Fort vs GNU Fortran

Pro’s of GNU Fortran vs fort:

• Much more complete Fortran support
• GNU Fortran (and GCC in general) supports more targets

Pro’s of fort vs GNU Fortran:

• Fort ASTs and design are intended to be easily understandable
• Fort is designed as an API, which allows it to be used as a foundation for other tools
• BSD-style license (can be embedded in other products)
• Clear and concise diagnostics