For FORTRAN users on the OS/2 platform, OpenWatcom F77 is a supported environment with both command line and Integrated Development Environment (IDE) support. OpenWatcom F77 gives FORTRAN users access to OS/2 system features. Sample programs and documentation aid new users in learning to use the product.
OpenWatcom is open-source. Serious developerers may want to consider learning to build the compiler themselves in order to submit bug fixes and enhancements to the product.
OpenWatcom FORTRAN is a cross compiler. If you have installed the product on OS/2 with the appropriate support, you can build executable programs for 32-bit Windows, 16-bit Windows, DOS, Novell and Linux.
OpenWatcom maintains a website at http://www.openwatcom.org/ which provides downloads of the latest product from ftp://ftp.openwatcom.org/. At the time this article was last updated the released version of FORTRAN for OS/2 is 1.8. The OS/2 installer, 60,550,243 bytes, is a single file OS/2 executable program.
To install, run the installer. Choose an installation directory that does not contain a space character, i.e. not "\Program Files\Watcom" but rather "\Watcom". My preference is to skip updating the OS/2 Config.Sys file. In that case, to use the compiler, I use two command files, one for command line support, and one for IDE support.
This is the script for command line support.
@ECHO OFF SET WATCOM=G:\OpenWatcomF77 SET TOOLKIT=G:\os2tk45 SET PATH=%WATCOM%\BINP;%WATCOM%\BINW;%PATH% SET INCLUDE=%WATCOM%\H;%WATCOM%\H\OS2;%TOOLKIT%\H SET FINCLUDE=%WATCOM%\SRC\FORTRAN;%WATCOM%\SRC\FORTRAN\OS2 SET EDPATH=%WATCOM%\EDDAT SET HELP=%WATCOM%\BINP\HELP;%HELP% SET BOOKSHELF=%WATCOM%\BINP\HELP;%BOOKSHELF% SET BEGINLIBPATH=%WATCOM%\BINP\DLL Start %WATCOM%\BINP\NMPBIND.EXE
The script for IDE support uses the script for command line support to set up the environment.
call bgenvf77.cmd binp\ide.exe
Once the product is installed, there is a useful tutorial in the OpenWatcom FORTRAN folder. View the "Getting Started" help file for more information.
When using the tutorial to build a sample program using the IDE, I found that the sample called for a library named "plbx3r.lib", but it really wanted "plib3r.lib". It is easy enough to add "plib3r.lib" to the link options to get a successful build.
The OpenWatcom developers and users have set up a newsgroup to obtain help and report bugs and problems. That newsgroup is news://news.openwatcom.org and use the group "openwatcom.users.fortran". Support is on a volunteer basis, so be patient.