Dependencies

TheRock manages two categories of third-party dependencies, distinguished by their packaging behavior (see BUILD_TOPOLOGY.toml for the build topology):

1. Sysdeps (third-party/sysdeps/) — libraries (zlib, elfutils, libdrm, numactl, etc.) built from source with SONAME rewriting and symbol versioning so that ROCm can ship private copies without conflicting with system-installed versions. This is the mechanism that enables portable distribution.
2. Other third-party libraries (third-party/) — libraries used as build dependencies that are not exposed externally and/or are not typically available as system packages (fmt, spdlog, flatbuffers, googletest, etc.). These are not given special packaging treatment. Most are CORE dependencies required by some subproject unconditionally while the HOST_MATH libraries (host-blas, SuiteSparse, fftw3) are optional.

The rest of this document covers the sysdeps in detail.

Sysdeps

The ROCm projects have a number of dependencies. Typically those that escape any specific library and are generally available as part of an OS distribution are the concern of TheRock. In these cases, TheRock prefers to build them all from source in such that:

• They are installed into the lib/rocm_sysdeps prefix.
• All ROCm libraries can find them by adding an appropriate relative RPATH.
• For symbol-versioned libraries, all symbols will be prefixed with AMDROCM_SYSDEPS_1.0_; whereas for non-versioned libraries, they will be built to version all symbols with AMDROCM_SYSDEPS_1.0.
• SONAMEs and semantic version symlink redirects are altered so that a single SONAME shared library with a prefix of rocm_sysdeps_ is available to link against, using a lib{originalname}.so as a dev symlink.
• Any PackageConfig descriptors are altered to be location independent.
• PackageConfig and CMake find_package config files are advertised (being created as necessary) so that package resolution happens the same as if they were OS installed.

In order for this setup to work, a number of conventions need to be followed project wide:

• Sub-projects should declare their use of a sysdep by including one or more of the global variables in their RUNTIME_DEPS (these will be empty if bundling is not enabled or supported for the target OS):
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_BZIP2
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_ELFUTILS
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_HWLOC
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_LIBCAP
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_LIBDRM
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_LIBLZMA
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_LIBMNL
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_LIBNL
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_NUMACTL
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_SQLITE3
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_UTIL_LINUX
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_ZLIB
  • THEROCK_BUNDLED_ZSTD
• Sub-projects must arrange for any libraries that depend on these to add the RPATH lib/rocm_sysdeps/lib.
• All projects should use the same package resolution technique (see below).

Canonical Way to Depend

Per usual with CMake and the proliferation of operating systems, there is no one true way to depend on a library. In general, if common distributions make a library available via find_package(foo CONFIG), we prefer that mechanism be used consistently.

Implementation notes for each library is below:

BZip2

• Canonical method: find_package(BZip2)
• Import library: BZip2::BZip2
• Alternatives: None (some OS vendors will provide alternatives but the source distribution of bzip2 has no opinion)

Expat

• Canonical method: find_package(expat)
• Import library: expat::expat

GMP

• Canonical method: find_package(gmp)
• Import library: gmp::gmp

hwloc

• Canonical method: find_package(hwloc CONFIG)
• Import library: hwloc::hwloc

ELFUTILS

Supported sub-libraries: libelf, libdw.

libelf

• Canonical method: find_package(LibElf)
• Import library: elf::elf
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(ELF libelf)

libdw

• Canonical method: find_package(libdw)
• Import library: libdw::libdw
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(DW libdw)

libcap

Provides Linux capabilities for privileged operations (used by RDC).

• Canonical method: find_package(Libcap)
• Import library: Libcap::Libcap
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(LIBCAP libcap) or direct linking (used by RDC)

libdrm

Supported sub-libraries: libdrm, libdrm_amdgpu

libdrm

• Canonical method: pkg_check_modules(DRM REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET libdrm)
• Import library: PkgConfig::DRM
• Vars: DRM_INCLUDE_DIRS

libdrm_amdgpu

• Canonical method: pkg_check_modules(DRM_AMDGPU REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET libdrm_amdgpu)
• Import library: PkgConfig::DRM_AMDGPU
• Vars: DRM_AMDGPU_INCLUDE_DIRS

liblzma

• Canonical method: find_package(LibLZMA)
• Import library: LibLZMA::LibLZMA
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(LZMA liblzma)

libmnl

Minimal netlink library for low-level netlink socket operations (used by amdsmi).

• Canonical method: find_package(libmnl CONFIG)
• Import library: libmnl::libmnl
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(LIBMNL REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET libmnl)
• Note: Provides minimalist netlink socket interface, typically used as a dependency for libnl

libnl

Netlink protocol library suite providing high-level interfaces for Linux kernel netlink sockets (used by amdsmi).

Supported sub-libraries: libnl (core), libnl-genl (generic netlink)

Core libnl

• Canonical method: find_package(libnl CONFIG)
• Import library: libnl::libnl
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(LIBNL3 REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET libnl-3.0)

Generic netlink (libnl-genl)

• Canonical method: find_package(libnl CONFIG) (provides libnl::genl)
• Import library: libnl::genl
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(LIBNL3_GENL REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET libnl-genl-3.0)
• Dependencies: Automatically links libnl::libnl

MPFR

• Canonical method: find_package(mpfr)
• Import library: mpfr::mpfr

NCurses

• Canonical method: find_package(ncurses)
• Import library: ncurses::ncurses

numactl

Provides the libnuma library. Tools are not included in bundled sysdeps.

• Canonical method: find_package(NUMA)
• Import library: numa::numa
• Vars: NUMA_INCLUDE_DIRS, NUMA_INCLUDE_LIBRARIES (can be used to avoid a hard-coded dep on numa::numa, which seems to vary across systems)
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(NUMA numa)

simde

SIMDe (SIMD Everywhere) is a header-only portability library for SIMD intrinsics.

• Canonical method: pkg_check_modules(simde REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET simde)
• Import library: PkgConfig::simde
• Vars: simde_INCLUDE_DIRS
• Alternatives: none
• Note: Header-only library, provides portable SIMD intrinsics (SSE, AVX, NEON, etc.)

sqlite3

• Canonical method: find_package(SQLite3)
• Import library: SQLite::SQLite3
• Alternatives: none

util-linux

Provides the libmount (mount table parsing/manipulation) and libblkid (block device identification) shared libraries. The full util-linux project ships many more utilities and libraries, but TheRock only builds these two.

Note: libmount links libblkid transitively, so consumers that only use libmount typically do not need to depend on libblkid directly.

libmount

• Canonical method: pkg_check_modules(LIBMOUNT REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET mount)
• Import library: PkgConfig::LIBMOUNT
• Alternatives: none

libblkid

• Canonical method: pkg_check_modules(LIBBLKID REQUIRED IMPORTED_TARGET blkid)
• Import library: PkgConfig::LIBBLKID
• Alternatives: none

zlib

• Canonical method: find_package(ZLIB)
• Import library: ZLIB::ZLIB
• Alternatives: pkg_check_modules(ZLIB zlib)

zstd

• Canonical method: find_package(zstd)
• Import library: zstd::libzstd (preferred - INTERFACE target that wraps the concrete library)
• Alternatives:
  • zstd::libzstd_shared - explicit shared library target
  • pkg_check_modules(ZSTD libzstd)
• Note: Upstream zstd's CMake install generates both zstd::libzstd (INTERFACE) and zstd::libzstd_shared (SHARED IMPORTED). The INTERFACE target forwards to the appropriate concrete target, abstracting static vs shared selection. Prefer zstd::libzstd for new code.