LLVM's New Fortran Compiler Previously Called "f18" Will Take The Name Of Flang

Earlier this year the LLVM Foundation formally approved making the f18 compiler part of the LLVM project to serve as a modern Fortran compiler for this effort led by NVIDIA, Arm, and others. The F18 compiler leverages modern C++ code and in pretty much all ways superior to the earlier LLVM Fortran compiler effort dubbed Flang.

Flang was first talked about more than a half-decade ago and a completely separate project. After the new F18 compiler was accepted, there began talk of changing its name. At first they were just going to call it the LLVM Fortran compiler but with "fortran" as the name being too generic especially when it comes to executable names, they debated the name change further.

Announced today is deciding the renaming of the F18 compiler will be Flang. Flang will be the formal name of this LLVM Fortran compiler albeit unrelated to the earlier Flag effort but at least more descriptive than the generic "Fortran" name proposal. Flang is to Fortran as Clang is to the C/C++ compiler front-end for LLVM.

It will certainly be interesting to watch this new Flang compiler evolve and there will be benchmarks against Gfortran and alternatives in due time.