FreeBSD-similar build-from-source Linux?

["C. Bergström"]

App Deb wrote:
> 2010/11/10 O. Hartmann <ohartman at zedat.fu-berlin.de>:
>   
>> Hello out there,
>>
>> well, my question may sound heretic, but since we use mostly Linux based
>> systems in our scientific environment and FreeBSD seems to lack in severe
>> support in GPGPU/CUDA capable graphics boards I need to setup a kind of
>> Linux facility to ensure having the software and tools I need for my work.
>> I'm looking for a Linux distribution that is similar handled like FreeBSD,
>> where I'm able to rebuild the whole system from sources, not even the the
>> Linux kernel, also the GNU tools and the packages. Maybe there are some
>> people out here having already taken this step.
>> Any suggestion is appreciated,
>>     
>
> The NVIDIA FreeBSD driver provides the cuda libraries for linux compatibilty.
>
> So 32-bit Linux Cuda applications should work on FreeBSD.
>   
Have you tested this first hand?

Is there 32bit Fermi?  (Sorry, but I don't think the HPC world can 
really live off 32bit applications)

There's 2 types of code in a "cuda application" there's host code 
produced by the native compiler (gcc/intel/pathscale.. etc) and the 
device code.. produced by nvidia's toolchain..  I would make a pretty 
nice bet that the nvidia userland toolchain will not compile code on 
freebsd right now..  (not be negative here, but I'm intimately familiar 
with it..)  Worse case you'd be copying code built on linux over and 
also the runtime libs..  (not to mention debugger, profiler. etc)

Anyway.. as mentioned before we'll have a native working solution before 
the years end and anyone interested to help alpha/beta test is welcome 
to contact me offlist..

./C