Re: g95 as a system fortran compiler?

>I think the lack of a fortran compiler in the base OS is
>a significant minus of an otherwise very general OS.

The decision to remove the Fortran compiler from the base system was
made long ago, and will probably not be reversed now.  There is no
Fortran code in the base system, and Fortran is needed only by a
minority of users.

>I understand that gfortran is not an ideal choice for
>many reasons, not least that it doesn't build on ia64.

Yes, it's unfortunate that the gcc maintainers discontinued support
for a number of architectures.  But maybe someone will step forward
and fix it?  Or llvm?  In the meantime, why don't you ask gerald_at_ to
make the default Fortran compiler on ia64 the latest version of
gfortran that will still work on that architecture?  You can do it
yourself by making some small local patches to ports/Mk/bsd.gcc.mk,
and to the relevant lang/gcc4X port, while you are waiting for him ...

>I think g95 could be a better choice for the following
>reasons:

It's shortcomings have already been pointed out by others.

b.