Auto-enable Fortran oneAPI compilers

[Flamefire]

In the "intel-compilers" toolchain the icx/icpx oneAPI compilers for C/C++ are automatically enabled for some version (2022.2.0+):

easybuild-framework/easybuild/toolchains/compiler/intel_compilers.py

Lines 75 to 79 in 6ac1bb0

	# auto-enable use of oneAPI C/C++ compilers for sufficiently recent versions of Intel compilers
	comp_ver = self.get_software_version(self.COMPILER_MODULE_NAME)[0]
	if LooseVersion(comp_ver) >= LooseVersion('2022.2.0'):
	if self.options.get('oneapi_c_cxx', None) is None:
	self.options['oneapi_c_cxx'] = True

Why is that not done for Fortran? Why the split? Is it even possible to mix using oneAPI and classic compilers?

It might also be useful to have some toolchain option/flag whether the oneAPI compilers are available and/or used.
I'm wondering: Will at some point only the oneAPI compilers be used? How could we detect them / distinguish to the "classic" ones? This is required for some easyblocks.

[tazend]

Hi,

was just yesterday also installing the intel-compilers toolchain on our Cluster and stumbled across this.
I think one reason why it was not enabled (just guessing) at the time starting with 2022.2.0 is that ifort was/is still superior to ifx, and ifx was still lacking features that were present in ifort.
So at the time, I believe it was still recommended to use ifort for production-ready code.

For example here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/guide/porting-guide-for-ifort-to-ifx.html Intel mentions that ifort continues to be superior and recommended (extract from the "Guiding Principles" section):

The Intel Fortran Compiler (ifx) enables developers needing OpenMP* offload to Intel GPUs. The OpenMP* 5.0, 5.1 GPU
 offload features in ifx are not available in ifort.
For now ifort continues to be our best-in-class Fortran compiler for customers not needing GPU offload support. 
The default compiler for the Microsoft Visual Studio* environment is ifort.

At the same time though with the 2024.0.0 release of the oneAPI toolkit, they now deprecated ifort, and it will be discontinued in October 2024: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/fortran-compiler/get-started-guide/2024-0/overview.html

So I assume that ifx has now catched up in performance/features, and it might make sense to enable it for future 2024 releases by default?