Unable to find CUDA runtime compilation libraries

I have a C++ application, that previously built a pipeline using elements from the nvcodec. I had set up h264 encode/decode, and vp9 decode. I had noticed that the docs ( nvcodec ) suggested there was also a vp8dec element, but I could never build it, and it didn’t appear in the output of gst-inspect-1.0 nvcodec so I just assumed the docs were a bit out of whack.

However, I had been successfully using cudaconvert in the pipeline until last week. This week when I tried to build it:
_video_converter = gst_element_factory_make("cudaconvert", "webrtcvideoconvert");
This line returned null, and the element is now missing from gst-inspect, which now reads as:

%gst-inspect-1.0 nvcodec
Plugin Details:
Name nvcodec
Description GStreamer NVCODEC plugin
Filename /usr/lib/gstreamer-1.0/libgstnvcodec.so
Version 1.26.6
License LGPL
Source module gst-plugins-bad
Documentation ``https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/nvcodec/``
Source release date 2025-09-14
Binary package Arch Linux GStreamer 1.26.6-2
Origin URL ``https://www.archlinux.org/``

Info: CUDA runtime compilation library "libnvrtc.so" was not found, check CUDA toolkit package installation

cudadownload: CUDA downloader
cudaipcsink: CUDA IPC Sink
cudaipcsrc: CUDA IPC Src
cudaupload: CUDA uploader
nvautogpuh264enc: NVENC H.264 Video Encoder Auto GPU select Mode
nvautogpuh265enc: NVENC H.265 Video Encoder Auto GPU select Mode
nvh264dec: NVDEC H.264 Decoder
nvh264enc: NVENC H.264 Video Encoder CUDA Mode
nvh265dec: NVDEC H.265 Decoder
nvh265enc: NVENC H.265 Video Encoder CUDA Mode
nvjpegdec: NVDEC jpeg Video Decoder
nvjpegenc: NVIDIA JPEG Encoder
nvmpeg2videodec: NVDEC mpeg2video Video Decoder
nvmpeg4videodec: NVDEC mpeg4video Video Decoder
nvmpegvideodec: NVDEC mpegvideo Video Decoder
nvvp9dec: NVDEC VP9 Decoder

16 features:
+-- 16 elements

I think the ‘info’ line is important, I remember there being major updates around my cuda packages recently (running Arch). I have the relevant file, I just can’t get gstreamer to find it:

% find / -name libnvrtc.so 2>/dev/null
/opt/cuda/targets/x86_64-linux/lib/stubs/libnvrtc.so
/opt/cuda/targets/x86_64-linux/lib/libnvrtc.so

Any suggestions for how to fix this would be welcome (or just to tell me that I’m barking up the wrong tree, and that cudaconvert has been taken away - in which case I might need to look at using Deepstream…

it should be fixed in cuda: Fix runtime kernel compile with CUDA 13.0 (!9745) · Merge requests · GStreamer / gstreamer · GitLab if it’s cuda13 case

As far as I understood, the root of the problem is in the fact that in Arch cuda is installed in /opt/cuda/ while ld is not looking up for shared libraries in /opt. Attempting to fix this issue for a couple of days as well

Further, fix for !9745 issue is in tag in tag 1.26.7, while Arch currently provides 1.26.6

Waited to confirm until 1.26.7 dropped, and everything has reappeared now