Installing OpenCL

It looks like I am not the only user who has difficulties in getting OpenCL up and running. Surely, if a system is discovered, during the installation period, that the hardware is OpenCL capable, then should it not be an intrinsic part of the basic installation process?


Moderator action: Moved from Graphics & Display to Feedback as there is only a vague statement and rhetorical question

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OpenCL, Rocm or Cuda are mainly used by developers to access the GPU directly through a low-level API. So no, the is no need to install it for every system. Devs usually know how to do it.

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If we interpret the original post, for the benefit of them and others, as needing guidance with OpenCL then most everything needed to know should be available at the archwiki;
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GPGPU#OpenCL

Megavolt should know that OpenCl is used in an increasing number of common graphic applications. This has not been a dev-only procedure for some years.

You are right. Point taken. But it is still a library that is used by very specific programs. Take Blender, for example. For all programs known to me that can use OpenCL, it is optional and it also works without it. Accordingly, as with blender, the libraries are optional:

$ pacman -Si blender 
Repository      : extra
Name            : blender
Version         : 17:4.3.2-7
Description     : A fully integrated 3D graphics creation suite
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.blender.org
Licenses        : Apache-2.0  BSD-2-Clause  BSD-3-Clause  GPL-2.0-or-later
                  GPL-3.0-or-later  LGPL-2.1-or-later  MIT  MPL-2.0  Zlib
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : alembic  bash  boost-libs  draco  embree  expat  ffmpeg  fftw
                  freetype2  gcc-libs  glew  glibc  gmp  hicolor-icon-theme  imath
                  intel-oneapi-compiler-dpcpp-cpp-runtime-libs
                  intel-oneapi-compiler-shared-runtime-libs  jack  jemalloc
                  level-zero-loader  libepoxy  libharu  libjpeg-turbo  libpng
                  libsndfile  libspnav  libtiff  libwebp  libx11  libxfixes  libxi
                  libxkbcommon  libxml2  libxrender  libxxf86vm  llvm-libs
                  materialx  onetbb  openal  opencolorio  openexr  openimagedenoise
                  openimageio  openjpeg2  openpgl  openshadinglanguage  opensubdiv
                  openvdb  openxr  potrace  pugixml  pystring  python  python-numpy
                  python-requests  sdl2  shared-mime-info  usd  xdg-utils  yaml-cpp
                  zlib  zstd
Optional Deps   : cuda: Cycles renderer CUDA support
                  intel-compute-runtime: Cycles renderer Intel OneAPI support
                  hip-runtime-amd: Cycles renderer AMD ROCm support
                  hiprt: Ray tracing AMD ROCm support
                  libdecor: wayland support
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Download Size   : 147.40 MiB
Installed Size  : 429.67 MiB
Packager        : Caleb Maclennan <alerque@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Wed Jan 22 12:45:08 2025
Validated By    : MD5 Sum  SHA-256 Sum  Signature

I don’t think it bothers to integrate each of these on the ISO via MHWD, but it’s more a question of disk space, as cuda would also be ~2GB (decompressed ~5GB) extra. The other libraries for AMD and INTEL are manageably small.

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