Version 3.38 Available!

Approximatrix is happy to announce the release of Simply Fortran 3.38 for Windows, macOS, and GNU/Linux. The latest release adds additional features to the development environment and fixes numerous user-reported bugs.

The development environment now adds a new option, Single Fortran File, to the project's Export menu. This option will concatenate all files in a project into a single Fortran source file, taking module dependencies into consideration when ordering the concatenation operation, to allow an entire project to be condensed into a single file for possible sharing.

Two new Fortran-specific Insert options have been added. The first, Interface to External Procedure, allows users to select a Fortran procedure that is not located in a module, and Simply Fortran will output a matching interface block for the procedure at the current cursor position. The second, Interface to a C Procedure, accepts a C procedure signature and inserts a valid Fortran interface to the C procedure at the cursor position. Both routines are available from the Insert submenu in the editor's popup menu, using the Control-I hotkey (or Command-I on macOS) to expose the Insert popup, or from the Insert submenu in the menubar's Edit menu.

Additional care has been added to the File Locations category in Project Options in the development environment. The Build and Module directories now actively prohibit using spaces or parentheses for these paths. Issues with parentheses in the project directory or any specified library or module directory on GNU/Linux and macOS have been fixed such that the compiler should work fine when present.

Projects relying on large numbers of files will now generate a list of objects for linking directly in the makefile. The earlier implementation of this solution relied on the development environment itself creating a list of objects when that list would cause the linking command in the makefile to exceed the allowable command line length. However, having the development environment handle this task separately had led to situations where the list would not be properly generated if, for example, automatic makefile updates were not enabled. The new implementation adds commands to concatenate a text file with each object filename within the makefile's linking step prior to executing the linker.

A number of development environment bugs were fixed in this release. Problems causing files to be inserted into the project outline at the incorrect location in GNU/Linux and macOS are eliminated. Insert operations should now display properly sized popup windows on Windows. Additionally, Insert popup windows should allow tabbing through fields properly on Windows. A missing environment variable on modern macOS releases is now present when starting the development environment; this fix makes it possible to compile C source files directly from the development environment again on macOS. Misleading AppGraphics documentation related specifically to fill operations and the limitations of the Windows GDI was fixed.

The latest release is available on the Download page. We'd like to thank the community for the numerous suggestions, ideas, and bug reports that led up to this release!