Problems with Executing a Fortran program on a standalone PC

I am interested in a .NET compatible Fortran compiler that can run on a 64bit or 32bit windows environment.

I got the Salford Fortran to compile and execute on a Windows XP PC with a link to the internet, but trying out the same test application on a standalone XP PC was less successful. The code compiled but did not execute. Why can't it execute ?

If I can get over this problem I want to try running a test application on a Xp windows 64 machine (which is also not connected to the internet)

Regards

Calum Finlayson

Do you have .NET installed on your standalone machine? Can you build your executable on this machine? Do you have Visual Studio on this machine? Can you step into the code using the debugger in Visual Studio?

hi, my original problem statement was inexact I have two probems - one with win32 and the other with .NET - sorry for being so misleading and vague.

The first is concerned with runnning/debugging on the secure laptop when the Plato IDE was switched to win32 executables created from the Plato IDE not to .NET . When I executed the project outside the Plato IDE the error 'salflibc.dll could not be found' appeared. As I found that both PCs apeeared to have identical silverfrost compiler installations, I re-installed the silverfrost compiler on the secure laptop. During installation an error was reported with the PATH variable to the effect that it was too long. I then differenced the PATH variables on the non-secure and secure laptops and I found that the secure laptop was missing the following:

Path=c:\program files\silverfrost\ftn95;C:\win32app\salford

I will need to get admin help to modify the path - will this solve the problem with executing the win32 project on the secure laptop ?

I have a prehistoric version of Visual Studio installed on the secure laptop which does not support .NET so when installing FTN95.NET cannot integrate with any Microsoft Visual Studio plugins on either PC. On the non-secure PC I have Microsoft Visual Studio 8 C# Express 2005 which appears to have no FTN95 plugins. I noticed that I had Microsoft .NET frameworks for 1.0,1.1 & 2.2 installed on both machines. I got the same error exception on both PCs when I tried to execute .NET code which I generated using the Plato IDE. I will insert the exception message in a subsequent posting.

Regards

Calum Finlayson

The >NET error messages I promised in my last posting are as follows

GARDv301.exe - Common Language Runtime Debugging. Application has generated an exception that could not be handled Process id=0xd0 (208), Thread id=0x198 (408)

GARDv301.exe - No debugger found. Registered JIT debugger is not available. An attempt to launch a JIT debugger with the following command resulted in an error code of 0x2 (2). Please check compiler settings.

As I do not have FTN95 plugins for Visual Studio, but only the .NEt framework the message appers quite sensible. I have made a mental note to cut down my application and try the .NET compiler again. If I still have problems I will post the code in a reply to this query thread.

Regards

Calum Finlayson

Yes the PATH must be set correctly.

For .NET applications you will need a recent Visual Studio and you will need to install the FTN95 plug-in via the FTN95 installation process.

Calum,

The PATH setting does two things: the first is so that when you invoke FTN95, it can be found (by Windows). The second enables your program to find SALFLIBC.DLL. If you can't modify the path for any reason (including not knowing how), then if you simply copy SALFLIBC.DLL to the same subdirectory (folder) as your EXE, and it will be found. Windows looks for programs and dlls etc first in the subdirectory your program was invoked from, then goes looking in a variety of other locations in order (inc the PATH setting). Having one copy of SALFLIBC means that you don't have a chance of having an out-of-date version in line to be picked up accidentally, putting it in your working directory means that you don't interfere with PATH settings for other programs.

.NET, on the other hand is a closed book to me.

Eddie

Quoted from LitusSaxonicum Calum,

The PATH setting does two things: the first is so that when you invoke FTN95, it can be found (by Windows). The second enables your program to find SALFLIBC.DLL. If you can't modify the path for any reason (including not knowing how), then if you simply copy SALFLIBC.DLL to the same subdirectory (folder) as your EXE, and it will be found. Windows looks for programs and dlls etc first in the subdirectory your program was invoked from, then goes looking in a variety of other locations in order (inc the PATH setting). Having one copy of SALFLIBC means that you don't have a chance of having an out-of-date version in line to be picked up accidentally, putting it in your working directory means that you don't interfere with PATH settings for other programs.

.NET, on the other hand is a closed book to me.

Eddie

Thanks for your suggestion, I edited the PATH Environment variable from the Control Panel System Utility Advanced tab. I added the missing paths and suddenly I could run and debug Win32 fortran projects on the secure laptop to my heart's content.

This is not to say that I have made any progress in getting the same projects to run as .NET applications.

Regards

Calum

Hi,

I got hold of a more extensive version of Visual Studio 2005 this time the Professional Edition (evaluation disk) and installed it on ny PC followed by re-installing Silverfrost FTN95 as before when the shield got to the point where the user specifies the version of .NET he wants to integrate all the check boxes were greyed out. I still cannot debug the .NET fortran application.

Can anyone tell me where to download the Fortran .NET Plug-in from ?

I assume vaguely that a config file will either have to be created or modified to make the plug-in visible to Visual Studio / Silverfrost FTN95 ?

Regards

Calum Finlayson

Again the question is 'do you have .NET installed on this machine'?

If .NET is installed then one or more of the check boxes should be enabled and the FTN95 plug-in will be installed when you run the standard FTN95 download.

After reading PaulLaidler's post I think that I was not clear about the nature of my problem with Microsoft Visual Studio product - the following is a clarification of message that I sent to Microsoft.

1. I installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition from an evaluation disk (Key No - which I was not asked to enter). The Visual Studio obviously suppoterd C++,Csharp, Java etc but not Fortran

2. I re-installed an evaluation copy of a .NET compatible Fortran compiler provided by Silverfrost

3. During the Fortran installation, the Fortran compiler attempts to integrate with the .NET features supplied by the Microsoft Visual Studio. I was asked which version of Visual Studio dotNET I wished to integrate the compiler, The choices being ,NET2002 ,NET2003 and .NET2005. AT THIS POINT THE CHECK BOXES WERE GREYED OUT

4. The inference I got from the Silverfrost compiler documentation was that the expected Fortran dotNET plugin was not being supplied by the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

5. I reported my inability to integrate tthe Silverfrost Fortran compiler with the dotNET features of Microsoft Visual Studio to a Silverfrost technical form and they stated that there were no know bugs with the Silverfrost installation shield. Other people were able to run/debug Silverfrost Fortran using dotNET features supplied by Microsoft Visual Studio.

6. This is why I was asking for a Fortran dotNET plug-in to add to my Microsoft Visual Studio or a demonstration version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (or later) that also integrates with Fortran compilers.

I do not want to buy the full Microsoft Visual Studio package at this stage as the majority of users in the department get along OK programming and debugging in .NET Csharp. I prefer to program in Fortran and I don't see why years of algorithm development in VAX based Fortran should go to waste. My plan was to sucessfully demonstrate one Fortran application being integreated with dotNET Csharp before buying the full Microsoft Visual Studio and the Silverfrost product.

Calum.Finlayson

My question remains unanswered.

You will need to have .NET installed on your machine.

You may get it with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 installation, if not then you will need to install it. As far as I remember, the FTN95 installation does not install .NET for you.

.NET is a free add-on to your operating system that can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/

Thanks Paul for directing me to the download location - I read your post just as I was describing my problem to a technical rep from the Microsoft Visual Sudio solution team. I got no hints from them about which download from Microsoft would solve my integration problem with Fortran. I am about to send them an email again.

Can you give me some more hints or point me at some article describing the Fortran .NET plug-in so I can de-mystify the process of going from Silverfrost to .NET XML ?

Regards

Calum.Finlayson

I am sorry but your request does not make any sense to me. I am afraid that I cannot help you further.

Can you give me some more hints or point me at some article describing the Fortran .NET plug-in

The plugin (ftn95-integration) is installed during the install/upgrade of the silverfrost fortran compiler. If the checkbox is grayed out, something is missing on your system, like the .net SDK (see the respective microsoft pages).

Anyways, I've got a problem at the next step: the integration into visual studio does not work even though the checkbox was accessible (and selected) and no error was encountered during installation. On the 32bit XP machine everything works flawless, but on the 64bit Vista one it seems to fail for some reason (in both cases visual studio 2005 is used). Additionally running .net-applications compiled with ftn95 on the XP machine can't be run under the 64bit Vista (message box telling that the application failed without further information comes up). The .net framework (sdk and redist) are installed, additionally the 32bit variant of the SDK.

Are there any experiences about .net/ftn95 under 64bit Vista? Thanks for any hints.

A few things...

1. You do not need Visual Studio to use FTN95 with Microsoft .NET. It is difficult to debug .NET apps without Visual Studio (although not impossible by any means).

2. When you install FTN95 it looks in the registry for copies of Visual Studio and based on the registry will grey or make available the appropriate plug-in. Clearly you need a copy of Visual Studio on the machine for this to work.

3. There is a problem installing the plug-in on Vista-64. We think we have fixed this problem and it will be available shortly in the next FTN95 release.

Thanks for the information, if you'd like us to do some testing of the plugin before the next ftn95 release just let me know (as far as I can tell the plugin was not installed at all as I fail to find a directory under Program Files or Program Files(x86) like 'Silverfrost\Silverfrost FTN95 for Visual Studio 2005' ).

At the weekend when I was on the home pc (operating system XP service pack 2).

I downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - it took many hours to download and long enough to create a full installation.

I then re-loaded Silverfrost FTN95 and guess what ? The integration options were still greyed out so no .NET debug.

I have had the same problem so far on 3 different PCs - what do I do now ?

Regards

Calum.Finlayson

that is probably because FTN95 5.10 does not have integration with VS 2008 😃

That will be available in 5.20 which will be available shortly.

3. There is a problem installing the plug-in on Vista-64. We think we have fixed this problem and it will be available shortly in the next FTN95 release.

It does not seem to work for me. I'm logged in with administrator privileges for the installation (ftn95 5.20) and the vs2005-checkbox is accessible and checked. Are there any prerequisites for getting the integration to work? Running executables compiled on 32bit XP (ftn95 .net using visual clearwin) do not run either, which might be connected to the problem.

Is there a kind of verbose installation log, and/or some information about what files should be where and how the registry information should look like.