Bug#323186: gfortran-4.0: gfortran should warn about 'f95' alias

[tow21@cam.ac.uk]

Package: gfortran-4.0
Version: 4.0.1-2
Severity: normal


I recognise that this is partly a matter of taste; but I would
much prefer that gfortran *not* provide a convenience alias
to f95. I recognise that it is under my control via
update-alternatives; however:

Prior to the release of gfortran, anyone requiring an f95
compiler on their system would use one of the commercially
available compilers, at least one of which uses the name
f95 by default, and others of which people might quite
reasonably alias to f95.

Previous versions of gcc-4.0 in debian did not use this alias,
so I assumed I was safe to continue having a commercial
compiler available as 'f95'. Having upgraded today to the
latest testing gcc-4.0, I now find all my build scripts
failing since 'f95' is not what it was yesterday.

I'm sure, when gfortran begins to get wider use, I'm not the
only one going to find myself surprised and bemused when
all my scripts fail like this - so I think a change of this
sort is worthy of a 'NEWS' item. At the very least, a mention
of this change somewhere would be nice - I can see no mention
in any of the changelogs provided.

Toby

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (100, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.11
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_GB.UTF-8)

Versions of packages gfortran-4.0 depends on:
ii  gcc-4.0                     4.0.1-2      The GNU C compiler
ii  gcc-4.0-base                4.0.1-2      The GNU Compiler Collection (base 
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libgfortran0                4.0.1-2      Runtime library for GNU Fortran ap
ii  libgmp3                     4.1.4-6      Multiprecision arithmetic library

gfortran-4.0 recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information