zedxxx/dllfetch

Collect dll dependencies using objdump

python-dllfetch

About

Recursively maps the DLL dependencies of an executable using objdump, using a breadth-first search. Optionally copies found dependencies into a specified directory.

Since it targets Windows, the script attempts to be as case-insensitive as possible: internally, all dependency names are converted to lowercase. When searching for files, a regular expression is constructed from the lowercase name with the re.I option, matching filenames with any capitalization. If a file matches, its path is stored with the proper capitalization.

This script was originally written to assist in deploying a dynamically linked Qt GUI app developed under Linux and cross-compiled for Windows using MXE. Theoretically, it could work on a Windows machine with Python 3.x, MinGW and binutils, but this was not tested.

Usage

For a brief usage summary, run the script with the -h switch.

At minimum, the script needs to be given one argument: the executable (or DLL, or any file that objdump understands) for which the dependencies should be fetched. Two optional arguments can be given:

• -d or --dir: Directory to be searched for dependencies. Defaults to the current working directory. Directories are searched recursively. Multiple directories can be specified as separate parameters (-d/--dir needs to be given once). Note that the -d option will consume as many arguments as possible, so unless you specify -t afterwards, make sure to put it after the executable:

  python3 dllfetch.py myprogram.exe                    # OK, will search current directory
  python3 dllfetch.py myprogram.exe -d /path/to/dlls   # OK, will search /path/to/dlls
  python3 dllfetch.py -d /path/to/dlls myprogram.exe   # BAD! myprogram.exe is interpreted as part of the -d option
  python3 dllfetch.py -d /path/to/dlls -t /target/dir myprogram.exe    # OK, the -t option only takes one argument
  

• -t or --target-dir: Copy found dependencies into this directory (using shutil.copy). If omitted, no files will be copied.

At the end of the run, the script prints a list of found and missing dependencies. This can be used to verify "acceptable" missing dependencies such as shell32.dll which is unlikely to be part of a cross-compiler, but can be reasonably expected to be found on most Windows machines.