Assessing and improving the quality of Fortran code in scientific software: FortranAnalyser
Michael García‐Rodríguez, Juan Antonio Añel, Javier Rodeiro Iglesias · Software Impacts · 2024
Despite its age, Fortran remains essential in many scientific fields. Ensuring code quality in long-term projects with evolving standards is critical, but few tools analyse Fortran, and they are not free. We present FortranAnalyser, a multi-platform, static analysis tool designed to enhance Fortran code quality. This paper outlines its development, features, and comparison with other tools. Additionally, we demonstrate its effectiveness through real-world applications, such as improving the Fortran code in a major global climate model. • We present a free software tool to perform static analysis of Fortran code. • FortranAnalyser has been used in the evaluation of climate models and the development of one of them. • FortranAnalyser is compatible with all the versions of Fortran. • FortranAnalyser could be executed on any operating system because it is multiplatform.