The variants of generics under consideration

[certik]

@tclune, @rouson, @FortranFan, @mleair, Magne and myself discussed the various paths forward. It seems the available options are:

• templates without concepts (e.g., traditional C++ templates)
• templates with concepts light (C++20)
• templates with concepts strong
• parametrized modules

It looks like the consensus is that we want strong concepts. The parametrized modules look like might be a different syntax for strong concepts.

The only other alternative path forward is intelligent macros, and we decided to concentrate on generics at this time (see #8 for more details).

[certik]

Here are the various issues/proposals for generics and the associated discussions from the fortran_proposals repository:

• Traits For Types fortran_proposals#125
• Generic Programming: modules parameterized over other modules fortran_proposals#74
• Proposal for general-use templates fortran_proposals#29
• Templates for functions/subroutines fortran_proposals#4

[certik]

Our next meeting is on Thursday Oct 22, 2020 01:00 PM Pacific Time:

https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/generics-proposal-for-202y-video-call/353/3

[mleair]

Some recent discussion on templated/parameterized modules in the J3 mailing list:

https://mailman.j3-fortran.org/pipermail/j3/2020-October/012587.html
https://mailman.j3-fortran.org/pipermail/j3/2020-October/012589.html
https://mailman.j3-fortran.org/pipermail/j3/2020-October/012590.html

-Mark