Re: Question about the criteria for a library to be in contrib
On 04/05/2011 03:05 PM, Hendrik Weimer wrote:
> Michael Wild <themiwi@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 04/05/2011 03:23 AM, Hendrik Weimer wrote:
>>> Michael Wild <themiwi@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> I find this hard to believe, since the package only uses the free
>>>> and publicly available API defined by the Khronos group and it is
>>>> up to the user of the package against which implementation of
>>>> OpenCL he wishes to link.
>>>
>>> How is this different from Java before OpenJDK was released?
>>
>> I think it is different because the package will only contain source
>> code. It hasn't been processed by or linked against any proprietary,
>> non-free software. Of course, one could argue that it is implicitly tied
>> to non-free software since there is currently no alternative. So, for
>> me, this is kind of a conundrum :-)
>
> The question is whether one can use ViennaCL without an OpenCL
> implementation. If not, then the ViennaCL package must depend on an
> OpenCL package, no matter whether it is source code only or not.
>
>> BTW, there is a free implementation of OpenCL in the works in Mesa,
>> called Clover [1]. However, I'm not sure how far along it is and how
>> active it is, the last commit is from late November, last year.
>
> If Clover gets packaged and you can use ViennaCL with it, I see no
> problem for the latter to go into main.
>
> Hendrik
So, this means that ViennaCL must Depends: on some OpenCL
implementation. Currently the only one packaged in Debian (still in
experimental) I can find is the one from NVIDIA. So, this probably means
then that it really has to go into contrib, right? Reading the ITP for
the OpenCL headers [1] also confirms this.
Thanks for the help
Michael
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=598477
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