Installing GFortran#
GFortran is the name of the GNU Fortran project. The main wiki page offers many helpful links about GFortran, as well as Fortran in general. In this guide, the installation process for GFortran on Windows, Linux, macOS and OpenBSD is presented in a beginner-friendly format based on the information from GFortranBinaries.
Windows#
Three sources provide quick and easy way to install GFortran compiler on Windows:
http://www.equation.com, provides 32 and 64-bit x86 executables for GCC version 12.1.
TDM GCC, provides 32 and 64-bit x86 executables for GCC version 10.3.
MinGW-w64 provides a 64-bit x86 executable for GCC version 12.2.
In all the above choices, the process is straightforward—just download the installer and follow the installation wizard.
Unix-like development on Windows#
For those familiar with a unix-like development environment, several emulation options are available on Windows each of which provide packages for gfortran:
Cygwin: A runtime environment that provides POSIX compatibility to Windows.
MSYS2: A collection of Unix-like development tools, based on modern Cygwin and MinGW-w64.
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL): An official compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables on Windows. With Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI one can run text editors and other graphical programs.
All of the above approaches provide access to common shells such as bash and development tools including GNU coreutils, Make, CMake, autotools, git, grep, sed, awk, ssh, etc.
We recommend the WSL environment for those looking for a Unix-like development environment on Windows.
Linux#
Debian-based (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc…)#
Check whether you have gfortran already installed
which gfortran
If nothing is returned then gfortran is not installed. To install gfortran type:
sudo apt install gfortran
to check what version was installed type:
gfortran --version
You can install multiple versions up to version 10 (on Ubuntu 22.04) by typing the version number immediately after “gfortran”, e.g.:
sudo apt install gfortran-8
To install newer versions on older Ubuntu releases, you will first need to add the following repository, update, and then install:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gfortran-10
Finally, you can switch between different versions or set the default one with the update-alternatives (see manpage). There are many online tutorials on how to use this feature. A well structured one using as an example C and C++ can be found here, you can apply the same logic by replacing either gcc or g++ with gfortran.
RPM-based (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE)#
sudo yum install gcc-gfortran
Since Fedora 22 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, dnf is the default package manager:
sudo dnf install gcc-gfortran
Arch-based (Arch Linux, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, etc…)#
sudo pacman -S gcc-fortran
macOS#
Xcode#
If you have Xcode installed, open a terminal window and type:
xcode-select --install
Binaries#
Go to fxcoudert/gfortran-for-macOS to directly install binaries.
Homebrew#
brew install gcc
Fink#
GNU-gcc Package link
MacPorts#
Search for available gcc versions:
port search gcc
Install a gcc version:
sudo port install gcc10
OpenBSD#
pkg_add g95
On OpenBSD, the GFortran executable is named egfortran. To test it, type:
egfortran -v
OpenCoarrays#
OpenCoarrays is an open-source software project that produces an application binary interface (ABI) used by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Fortran front-end to build executable programs that leverage the parallel programming features of Fortran 2018. Since OpenCoarrays is not a separate compiler, we include it here, under gfortran.
While with gfortran you can compile perfectly valid code using coarrays, the generated binaries will only run in a single image (image is a Fortran term for a parallel process), that is, in serial mode. OpenCoarrays allows running code in parallel on shared- and distributed-memory machines, similar to MPI:
cafrun -n <number_of_images> <executable_name>
The process of installation is provided in a clear and comprehensive manner on the official site.
We emphasize that native installation on Windows is not possible. It is only possible through WSL.