# Why is source build Julia required to use GPU packages

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-is-source-build-julia-required-to-use-gpu-packages/9747>\
**Category:** GPU\
**Created:** [March 15, 2018, 9:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-is-source-build-julia-required-to-use-gpu-packages/9747 "2018-03-15T21:18:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cuchxq](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/cuchxq/32/3830_2.png) [@cuchxq](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cuchxq)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2018, 9:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-is-source-build-julia-required-to-use-gpu-packages/9747/1 "2018-03-15T21:18:55Z")

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I am trying to use Julia GPU packages, and README files from juliaGPU GitHub repo all states that in order to use these packages, I need to build Julia from source. But why is that? Any help is appreciated! Thank you in advance.

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**Author:** ![maleadt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/maleadt/32/10097_2.png) [@maleadt](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/maleadt)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2018, 9:23pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-is-source-build-julia-required-to-use-gpu-packages/9747/2 "2018-03-15T21:23:17Z")

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CUDAnative.jl itself doesn’t require a source build, but its LLVM.jl dependency does, because of [LLVM C API extensions](https://github.com/maleadt/LLVM.jl/tree/release-0.6/deps/llvm-extra) that _need_ to be built by exactly the same compiler as the one building LLVM (for ABI compatibility reasons). However, on 0.7 we’re building [these API extensions](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/src/llvm-api.cpp) as part of Julia itself, so you won’t need a source build anymore 🙂 With nightly builds, this should work already, but not all packages are ready to be used with 0.7 yet.