.. SPDX-FileCopyrightText: Copyright (c) 2025-2026 NVIDIA CORPORATION & AFFILIATES. All rights reserved.
.. SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0

``cuda-bindings`` 11.8.6 Release notes
==========================================

Released on January 24, 2025.

Highlights
----------

- Support Python 3.13
- Add an optional dependency on the CUDA NVRTC wheel
- Enable discovery and loading of shared libraries from CUDA wheels
- ``cuda-python`` is now a meta package, currently depending only on ``cuda-bindings`` (`see RFC <https://github.com/NVIDIA/cuda-python/issues/105>`_)

Wheels support for optional dependencies
----------------------------------------

Optional dependencies are added for packages:

- nvidia-cuda-nvrtc-cu12

Installing these dependencies with ``cuda-python`` can be done using:

.. code-block:: shell

   pip install cuda-python[all]

Same applies to ``cuda-bindings``.

Discovery and loading of shared library dependencies from wheels
----------------------------------------------------------------

Shared library search paths for wheel builds are now extended to check site-packages. This allows ``cuda-python``/``cuda-bindings`` to seamlessly use the aforementioned CUDA Toolkit wheels installed in the user's Python environment.
