Recently I came across this question:

Merge Intel Fortran compiler tags: [ifort], [intel-visual-fortran] and [intel-fortran]

Here, they renamed into . Essentially, the tag was renamed from command into <vendor/group>-fortran. Similar tags exist for other vendors, such as , , , .

seems a bit the odd duck here as gfortran is the name of the binary. So to unify things, I would propose to move into or .

Nonetheless, I recognize that most people would tag using . But the same would hold for and , ... which are tags that don't exist or have been renamed.

Hence, I would propose to reinstate those tags, but directly as a synonym of the tags <vendor/group>-fortran


When it comes to tags, we do indeed want the canonical tag to be named in accordance with the actual thing to which it refers. For example, if the language/product/library/API is branded as "Big X Compiler", then we'd want the tag to be named . If it is commonly referred to by its users as "BXC", then we might also have a synonym tag, .

I'm also sympathetic to the consistency argument. I've cleaned up countless variants of tags (e.g., SQL Server) to improve consistency. I believe that this makes the site better by making related content easier to find, but even if it doesn't, it makes me feel better.

That said, in the case of , I am not convinced. It looks like GFortran is one of the official names of the product, if not the official name. Not only does Wikipedia refer to it this way, but the GCC Wiki entry is entitled "GFortran" and says:


It continues to refer to the product as "gfortran" throughout the article. I don't see anywhere where it is called "GNU Fortran" or "GCC Fortran".

Contrast this with , where Intel refers to the product as "Intel Fortran Compiler" or just "Intel Fortran". "IFORT" is merely an abbreviation for that.

If you think it would improve the tagging system, I would be happy to add and/or as synonyms redirecting to . But I do not see any cause for renaming the tag, since that does appear to be widely used, including by official sources, as the name of the product.

  • Thanks for you answer. It is true the that Wiki entry references gfortran often, however when reading the Documentation, you notice that they always talk about GNU Fortran and when the word gfortran appears, it is always styled as a command. This sort of implies that the GCC-team prefers to use the term GNU Fortran to reference the Fortran compiler suit. – kvantour Jan 16 '20 at 12:05

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