f2c is a Fortran-to-C converter. This package includes libf2c, which must be linked to the resulting C code. Thus the general idea is: f2c foo.f; gcc foo.c -lf2c Or use the fc script provided in the docs directory. Beware, fc is also an (unrelated) bash builtin. f2c used to use two separate libraries, libi77 and libf77. These are now rolled together into libf2c. NB libf2c carries a separate version number from f2c itself. The version number associated with the SlackBuilds package is the f2c version number. If combining with gfortran, you may want to use gfortran -ff2c. See the gfortran man page. Multiple files must be downloaded because netlib doesn't provide a convenient single tarball.