ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2071 WG5 Business Plan and Convener's Report for ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2015 Plenary PERIOD COVERED BY THIS REPORT: 1 August 2014 to 7 August 2015 SUBMITTED BY: John Reid 1.0 MANAGEMENT SUMMARY 1.1 JTC1/SC22/WG5 STATEMENT OF SCOPE The development and maintenance of ISO/IEC Fortran programming language standards. 1.2 PROJECT REPORT 1.2.1 COMPLETED PROJECTS None. 1.2.2 PROJECTS UNDERWAY 22.02.01.01 Programming Language Fortran - Part 1: Base language WG5 has decided that the next revision of the base language will be limited to the incorporation of corrigenda, editorial improvements, and the Technical Specifications, plus the removal of simple deficiencies in, and discrepancies between, existing facilities. The final list of deficiencies and discrepancies was chosen during the August 2015 meeting of WG5. The primary responsibility for maintenance of the base language has been delegated to INCITS/PL22.3. Corrigendum 3 to Fortran 2008 was published in September 2014. About 25 'interpretations' are under consideration. It is expected that the fourth corrigendum to Fortran 2008 will be submitted before the end of 2015 and a fifth corrigendum in 2016. 22.02.02 Programming Language Fortran - Part 2: Varying Length Character Strings WG5 continues to have responsibility for maintenance of this part of the Fortran standard; there has been no maintenance activity during the period. 22.18508 Type 2 Technical Specification on Additional Parallel Features in Fortran A New Work Item on a Technical Specification on Additional Parallel Features in Fortran was approved on 5 December 2012. The TS will provide support for features that were deferred during the development of Fortran 2008 because of insufficient time to reach consensus on their details. The PDTS has been constructed and was submitted for ballot between May and July. It passed this ballot, see ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22 N 5052, without any NO votes, but with 3 countries (Germany, Japan, and UK) voting YES with comments. All the comments were considered at the meeting of WG5 in London, August 3-7, 2015 and the responses have been agreed (see ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2066). A modified TS that accords with these responses will be submitted for publication by October 2015. 1.2.3 CANCELLED PROJECTS None. 1.2.4 CO-OPERATION AND COMPETITION WG5 cooperates closely with the ANSI INCITS/PL22.3 Fortran Technical Committee, to whom it has delegated the technical development of Fortran as well as the maintenance of Fortran 2008. There is also contact and or liaison with several organisations including OpenMP Architecture Review Board MPI Forum IFIP WG2.5 - Numerical Software UPC Consortium SC22/WG9 Ada ANSI PL22.11 - C ANSI PL22.16 - C++ with several of the PL22.3 and WG5 members and vendors also being members of the other organisations. Many of those responsible for the development of commercial Fortran compilers are members of PL22.3 and/or WG5. Dan Nagle (PL22.3 chairman) has been actively involved with WG23 (Programming Language Vulnerabilities). A draft Fortran annex has been constructed and has been forwarded to WG23. Additional text for the new vulnerabilities is being prepared. There are no competitive activities. 2.0 PERIOD REVIEW 2.1 MARKET REQUIREMENTS Fortran is the language of choice for much scientific, engineering, and economic programming, particularly for very large programs that have evolved over many years. There has been some delay over the implementation of Fortran 2003, but Cray, IBM, and Intel now have full implementations and several other vendors have implemented most of the features. Some features of Fortran 2008, notably coarrays, are being implemented, and Cray has a full Fortran 2008 implementation. Cray, Intel, and gfortran have implemented coarrays. Most major Fortran compiler vendors are represented either on WG5 or its Primary Development Body, INCITS/PL22.3, as are three of the major research establishments that rely on Fortran for their scientific computing. In addition to vendor-supplied and specific mailing lists, there is an active email list and an active usenet newsgroup for users of Fortran, which provide valuable feedback from users. All these diverse sources are being used to guide the development of the language, both through revisions to the base language Standard, and through other related standards and technical reports. 2.2 ACHIEVEMENTS The main achievements during the period have been the construction of the DTS on additional parallel features and the choice of features for the next revision of Fortran. 2.3 RESOURCES As elsewhere in the Standardization world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to persuade employers to provide the necessary funding for Standards activity. Most of the technical work involved in developing Standards and Technical Reports is performed by INCITS/PL22.3 under the strategic direction of WG5. All WG5 meetings since 2002 have been joint meetings with INCITS/PL22.3 in order to optimize its use of human resources. WG5 itself carries out much of its discussions via email, with an annual meeting, usually during the summer, and occasional other meetings at critical stages in the development of the base language standard. 3.0 FOCUS FOR NEXT WORK PERIOD 3.1 DELIVERABLES The TS on Additional Parallel Features in Fortran will be delivered by October 2015. Corrigendum 4 will be forwarded by December 2015 and Corrigendum 5 by July 2016. 3.2 STRATEGIES WG5 operates under a strategic plan described in WG5 Standing Document 4, the latest version of which is ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N1349. In particular, projects for which WG5 is responsible may be handled by other Development Bodies, notably ANSI INCITS/PL22.3. Detailed plans for the next three years are contained in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5/N2070. 3.3 RISKS As far as possible, WG5 tries to anticipate technical comments during international ballots by holding informal ballots of its members before any documents are submitted for ballot. Nevertheless, unexpected technical comments can always delay the planned schedule. 3.4 OPPORTUNITIES WG5 has made extensive use of email for over 20 years to speed up technical development. Documents are now distributed by LiveLink. An open web site is used to provide non-technical, and other publicly available, information to interested parties. In addition to speeding up the distribution of documents, the use of electronic distribution and communication systems also provides many other benefits, such as the ability to rapidly carry out informal straw ballots. 3.5 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES WG5's priority activities this year are the maintenance of the base Fortran language Standard, ISO/IEC 1539-1:2010, and the preparation of the TS on Additional Parallel Features in Fortran for publication. 4. OTHER ITEMS 4.1 POSSIBLE ACTION REQUESTS AT FORTHCOMING PLENARY None. 4.2 PROJECT EDITORS ISO/IEC 1539-1: Malcolm Cohen, UK ISO/IEC 1539-2: John Reid, UK TS on Further Interoperability of Fortran with C: Bill Long, USA TS on Additional Parallel Features in Fortran: Bill Long, USA 4.3 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION PL22.3: http://www.j3-fortran.org/ LiveLink: http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=8919787&objAction=browse&viewType=1 4.4 RECENT MEETINGS 2013/06/24-28 Delft, Netherlands 2014/06/23-27 Las Vegas, USA 2015/08/3-7 London, UK 4.5 FUTURE MEETINGS 2016/06/6-10 Boulder, Co, USA 2017/06/26-30 Garching, Germany 2018/06 California, USA Note that WG5 normally meets annually, with extra meetings being held as/when necessary to process ballot comments or other high priority activities that do not accord with the regular meeting schedule. WG5's Primary Development Body, INCITS/PL22.3, meets three times each year. Other work is carried out via email.