Future strategy regarding frontends

[reuterbal]

What maintenance does this project need?

We need to have a discussion on the future of Loki frontends.

Fparser is being actively worked on, is the most complete and our standard frontend.

Our use of OMNI compiler depends on the specific OMNI version packaged in the CLAW repository. That version is a few years old and doesn't build with newer compiler versions, e.g., GNU10+, anymore. But even the latest updates on the upstream OMNI compiler repository have been more than 2 years ago: https://github.com/omni-compiler/omni-compiler Our Github CI currently runs with the ubuntu 20.04 runners, which will likely be EOL some time next year, when that Ubuntu version goes out of maintenance. Hence, we have a call to make regarding the future of OMNI in Loki.

The Open Fortran Parser relies on an outdated Python package that wraps an old ROSE compiler frontend version. We have already earmarked this for removal (#209).

The question is whether

• we would be comfortable relying on a single frontend, or
• if we should expend effort to either update one of the others to a more recent version
• explore other frontend options in lieu

Various options exist for the last:

• Use an up-to-date ROSE compiler version, which may provide other Python binding options
• Explore Fxtran as a frontend
• Explore Lfortran as a frontend
• ...?

Organisation

No response

[reuterbal]

As explained in #408, removing CLAW allows to upgrade OMNI to the most recent release which currently remains compatible with the latest compiler versions and CI runners. If anything, this buys us a little time...