CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxstaticbinaryfortranportability
JSchmitty
JSchmitty

Reputation: 63

Create portable and static fortran linux binary?

I'm investigating options to create portable static Linux binaries from Fortran code (in the sense that the binaries should be able to run on both any new and resonably old Linux distros). If I understand correctly (extrapolating from C) the main issue for portability is that glibc is forwards but not backwards compatible (that is static binaries created on old distros will work on newer but not vice versa). This at least seems to work in my so far limited tests (with one caveat that use of Scratch files causes segfaults running on newer distros in some cases).

It seems at least in C that one can avoid compiling on old distros by adding legacy glibc headers, as described in

https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header

This specific method does not work on Fortran code and compilers, but I would like to know if anyone knows of a similar approach (or more specifically what might be needed to create portable Fortran binaries, is an old glibc enough or must one also use old libfortran etc.)?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 323

Answers (1)

Pierre de Buyl
Pierre de Buyl

Reputation: 7293

I suggest to use the manylinux docker images as a starting point.

In short: manylinux is a "platform definition" to distribute binary wheels (Python packages that may contain compiled code) that run on most current linux systems. The need for manylinux and its definition can be found as Python Enhancement Proposal 513

Their images are based on CentOS 5 and include all the basic development tools, including gfortran. The process for you would be (I did not test and it may require minor adjustments):

  1. Run the docker image from https://github.com/pypa/manylinux
  2. Compile your code with the flag -static-libgfortran

The possible tweak is in the situation that they don't ship the static version of libgfortran in which case you could add it here.

The resulting code should run on most currently-used linux systems.

Upvotes: 1

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