FoBiS.py

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FoBiSFortran Building System for poor people

Automatic dependency-resolving build tool for modern Fortran projects — no makefiles, no boilerplate.

Quick Start
Guide
View on GitHub
⚡

Zero-configuration builds

Drop FoBiS into any Fortran project and run `fobis build`. It recursively scans sources, resolves all `use` and `include` dependencies, and compiles in the correct order — automatically.

🔗

Automatic dependency resolution

Parses every source file for module definitions, use statements, and include directives. Builds and updates the full dependency hierarchy on each run, skipping up-to-date objects.

⚙️

Multi-compiler support

First-class support for GNU gfortran, Intel ifort/ifx, AMD flang, g95, IBM XL, NAG, PGI, NVIDIA nvfortran, and fully custom compilers. MPI, OpenMP, coarray, and coverage variants included.

📄

fobos — the FoBiS makefile

A concise INI-style configuration file replaces makefiles entirely. Define multiple build modes, templates, variables, and custom rules — all in one readable file.

🚀

Parallel compilation

Compile independent translation units concurrently with `-j N`. Dependency ordering is respected automatically; only the safe parallel frontier is compiled in parallel.

🌐

Fetch GitHub dependencies

Declare external FoBiS projects in a `[dependencies]` fobos section. Run `fobis fetch` to clone, pin to branch/tag/rev, and build — then `fobis build` picks them up automatically.

🔬

Introspective doctests

Embed micro-unit-tests directly inside Fortran comment docstrings. FoBiS generates, compiles, and runs volatile test programs automatically — inspired by Python's doctest module, no test harness needed.

🆓

Free and open source

Released under the GNU GPL v3 license. Free to use, study, modify, and distribute. Contributions welcome — see the contributing guidelines on GitHub.

Why FoBiS? ​

Modern Fortran's module system is powerful — but tracking inter-module compilation order by hand in a makefile quickly becomes a nightmare as project size grows. Every time you add a module, rename a file, or restructure directories, the makefile needs manual updates.

FoBiS solves this completely. It parses source files on every invocation, rebuilds the dependency graph from scratch, and compiles in the correct order — with no configuration required for simple projects.

bash
# That's it. FoBiS finds all programs, resolves all dependencies, compiles.
fobis build

For complex projects, a single fobos file in the project root replaces makefiles entirely:

ini
[modes]
modes = debug release

[debug]
compiler  = gnu
cflags    = -c -O0 -g -Wall
build_dir = ./build/debug/

[release]
compiler  = gnu
cflags    = -c -O3
build_dir = ./build/release/
bash
fobis build -mode release

Projects using FoBiS ​

FoBiS is used to build a wide range of Fortran projects:

  • ADAM — Accelerated fluid Dynamics on Adaptive Mesh refinement grids  |  GitHub
  • BeFoR64 — Base64 encoding/decoding library for Fortran  |  GitHub
  • FACE — Fortran ANSI Colors and Escape sequences  |  GitHub
  • FiNeR — Fortran INI ParseR and generator  |  GitHub
  • FLAP — Fortran command Line Arguments Parser for poor people  |  GitHub
  • FUNDAL — Fortran UNified Device Acceleration Library  |  GitHub
  • FOSSIL — FOrtran Stereo (si) Litography parser  |  GitHub
  • MORTIF — MORTon Indexer (Z-order) Fortran environment  |  GitHub
  • MOTIOn — Modular (HPC) Optimized Toolkit (for) IO (in fortra)n  |  GitHub
  • PENF — Portability Environment for Fortran poor people  |  GitHub
  • StringiFor — Strings Fortran Manipulator with steroids  |  GitHub
  • VecFor — Vector algebra class for Fortran poor people  |  GitHub
  • VTKFortran — pure Fortran VTK (XML) API  |  GitHub

Author ​

Stefano Zaghi — stefano.zaghi@cnr.it · GitHub

Copyrights ​

FoBiS.py is an open source project distributed under the GPL v3 license. Anyone interested in using, developing, or contributing to FoBiS.py is welcome — see the contributing guidelines.