Currently, TAO users must employ the Fortran file suffix .F rather than .f. This convention enables use of the CPP preprocessor, which allows the use of the #include statements that define TAO objects and variables. (Familiarity with the CPP preprocessor is not needed for writing TAO Fortran code; one can simply begin by copying a TAO Fortran example and its corresponding makefile.)
The TAO directory ${}TAO_DIR/include/finclude
contains the Fortran include files
and should be used via statements
such as the following:
#include "include/finclude/includefile.h"Since one must be very careful to include each file no more than once in a Fortran routine, application programmers must manually include each file needed for the various TAO (or other supplementary) components within their program. This approach differs from the TAO C++ interface, where the user need only include the highest level file, for example, tao.h, which then automatically includes all of the required lower level files. As shown in the various Fortran example programs in the TAO distribution, in Fortran one must explicitly list each of the include files.