hi, i'm currently using the gnu compiler "gfortran" , but i don't think the executable files it creates are compatible with windows XP (though i may be mistaken). my boss needs a few simple programs that i have written, but i will not be able to compile the code on his pc. are there any compilers out there that i can use to create such executables?

I don't believe you can use a compiler on one os to compile files for another unless you are using a language which runs in a virtual machine such as java.

I'm not sure what exactly is available in the MINGW project. If they don't have what you are asking for, I doubt it is elsewhere.

MINGW is a port of the GNU compiler (but I'm not sure whether includes fortran or whether it is just C and C++) both to produce native Windows executables and to be run on Windows.

Some people have built compilers from the MINGW sources that produce the same Windows output as MINGW but run on Linux. That would be what you want. I don't know whether there is any released copy of that, or whether it is something only a MINGW expert can do with the MINGW source code.

Alternately, why can't you compile on a Windows machine? No access to a Windows machine? Or just no compatible compiler?

I think either Cygwin or MINGW or both includes a gfortran compiler. Both Cygwin and Mingw are designed to compile on Windows. IIUC, Mingw produces true native Windows executables, while Cywin produces semi-native executables than run on Windows with support from a Cygwin .DLL (internally use Unix semantics for various OS requests that get translated to Windows calls by that DLL).

Another alternate (if you don't have access to a Windows system, nor a license to run Windows in a VM in Linux): You can run Mingw or Cygwin or other Windows fortran compiler in wine on Linux to produce a Windows executable (may require installing a significant number of include files and lib files from a Windows development environment into your wine environment).

MinGW is available as a cross-compiler on Debian, but I don't know about other distros.