Hello dear Arch community,

Blender https://archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/blender/ package in official repositories lists CUDA https://archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/cuda/ as BOTH optional and make dependency, the optional one described as "cycles renderer cuda support". However, Cycles CUDA support is already present even without explicitly installing CUDA package, as long as you have the proprietary NVIDIA https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/nvidia/ drivers installed (don't know the situation with nouveau). As far as I know, CUDA package is only needed while building Blender yourself from the source, hence the make dependency. So my question is, does Blender really depend on CUDA for any additional feature? Or is it simply a legacy dependency or a mistake on packagers' end? Does it serve a purpose that I'm missing?

Thanks,

Ali Emre Gülcü