I don't know whether I'm supposed to post in here but I read this discussion just now and a few thoughts came into my mind that I'd like to state. Please forgive me if I state obvious things here:
I am working at work with Fortran and I am using C::B successfully for development with Fortran (C++ mixed) applications. While doing so the following things I believe should be taken into account:
1.) The files a compiler supports are not only header and source files. Fortran has no header files and (afaik) Java does not as well. The much I understand from C::B is that the filetypes are hard-coded which may lead to difficulties when adding support for new compilers. It may be better to have the files definition in a configurable way (attached to the compiler) as well. This would be good also for non-default file extensions as they are used, for example "h++" for a c++ header file. I don't like it but this might be a reason for somebody not to migrate to C::B because he would have to change the extension of all of it's header files.
2.) I had to add the support for the Fortran compiler in C::B and my project files several times because of the changes in how the (project) settings are stored and the addition of new compilers (there is nothing wrong with that!). But what could be done better is not to assign an index to a compiler (in the project file) but a keyword. Because an index might change, a keyword rarely.
3.) As I said: One might use mixed compilers in a single project. This is very common with Fortran: You can easily mix C, C++ and Fortran together since G77 will convert Fortran into C (via F2C) and then compile everything using GCC. So there are reasons not to be very strict in a compiler-per-project and linker-per-project. It works very well how it's done currently so I am stating this here only because I'm afraid this might get broken.
In the end there might be good reasons not to take this into account because as far as I understand C::B was designed to be a C/C++ IDE only in the first place. So of course I'd like to hear comments why not to take this into account.
With regards, Morten.