Re: Hello from ROCm

[Christian Kastner <ckk@debian.org>]

Hi Cordell,

I'd like to echo Norbert in saying: thanks for joining!

I think Norbert summarized the situation perfectly. I would only like to
expand on the following point:

On 24.03.21 03:21, Norbert Preining wrote:
>> While I have knowledge of ROCm, I don't have any experience with the process
>> of creating and maintaining official Debian packages. I hope that by
> 
> No need for that - the few things that might be necessary to explain I
> can explain when they come up. Please don't worry and spend your time
> investigating how Debian packaging works.

Full agreement here. Debian packaging, which can be non-trivial, is
entirely routine for us. Upstreams ensuring an easy-to-follow build
process are immensely more helpful than upstreams attempting Debian
packaging.

However, what Debian also provides is better, and wider, deployment.

Compare the multi-page installation instructions for ROCm [1] to
what Debian users can currently do with CUDA (providing the non-free
section is enabled):

  $ sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit

ROCm currently provides a repository with .debs, with support limited to
Ubuntu LTS. However, if we could successfully build and ship packages
from within Debian, that should cover Debian, Ubuntu LTS, and many other
Debian derivatives, so a strict superset of platforms. And, unless I'm
mistaken, that would eliminate the burden of maintaining an own repo on
ROCm upstream.

A closer collaboration, resulting in something that would enable a

  $ sudo apt-get install rocm

or similar using the official Debian repositories, would seem like a
win for everyone: ROCm, Debian+derivatives, and users. 

Best,
Christian

[1] https://rocmdocs.amd.com/en/latest/Installation_Guide/Installation-Guide.html