[arch-dev-public] Opencl/Cuda headers

[Ray Rashif]

On 30 October 2010 12:45, Stéphane Gaudreault <stephane at archlinux.org> wrote:
> The main disadvantage of this solution is the addition of proprietary
> software for which we can only provide limited support in case of bugs
> or incompatibility with other updates.

This won't likely be an issue. It's a given that no one should be
expecting much assistance from the distribution in the event a package
is of a proprietary nature. When a problem arises, just don't hold
back anything else, which brings us to...

> According to the maintainer of the Cuda package in AUR [4], Cuda requires
> gcc version 4.4 (it is broken with version 4.5) and sometimes releases
> depend on beta drivers[5]. I think it is probably better to wait until these
> dependency problems are fixed before thinking about inclusion in
> [extra] or [community].

Wait or don't wait, this has no long-term guarantee. It can break
anytime. [extra] is definitely not a good place for it. The fact that
random releases may depend on beta drivers convinces me to leave it in
[unsupported], unless those drivers are brought in as well.

> My suggestion would be to package only OpenCL headers (Khronos version) and
> eventually discuss addition of Cuda if it becomes easier to maintain in a
> rolling release distribution.

Yes, do that.

>The new "khronos-opencl-headers" package could be added as optional
> dependencies for nvidia-utils which will also include a "provides=('libCL')"[6].
> I tested this solution on several codes and it works well. It also seems that
> Debian is going to do something very similar[7].

Same here, I think a straightforward name would suffice. Also, it's
unnecessary to have it as any kind of dependency.