proposal for consistency of Fortran and C interfaces

(no name) (j_nieplocha@pnl.gov)
Wed, 31 May 1995 13:21:12 -0700

When writing libraries in C language for Fortran programs, usually
there are some implicit assumptions made about consistency of
the C and Fortran interfaces to a message-passing library.

As a minimum, MPI should guarantee consistency of:

1. startup and cleanup operations: MPI_INIT and MPI_FINALIZE

MPI_INIT when called from either language should initialize both Fortran
and C interfaces to MPI.

Similarly, MPI_FINALIZE called from either language should be able to clean
and shut up both C and Fortran interfaces.

2. groups and communicators

This requires that routines like MPI_COMM_RANK, MPI_GROUP_RANK,
MPI_COMM_SIZE, MPI_GROUP_SIZE returned the same values for the
specified communicator/group when called by the same process
from either language.

Of course, we still need a mechanism for passing MPI handles between
Fortran and C, for example like the one proposed by Leslie Hart and
Tom Henderson.

--Jarek Nieplocha