copydeps is a tool to analyze and copy the dependencies of ELF binaries, as used on Linux and other UNIX systems. It is useful to create light, self-contained installers.
It works on both executables and libraries.
- A Linux system (copydeps might work on BSD systems, but this has not been tested)
- Python 3
- pyelftools
- ldd
Install with ./setup.py install or just run copydeps.py from the source
tree.
Assuming you want to copy all dependencies of the foo binary to the current
directory, run:
copydeps /path/to/foo -d .
The list probably includes way too many libraries you can assume to be
installed on the destination system. To tell copydeps to ignore them, create a
exclude list file (you can have a look at exclude-list.sample for
inspiration) and run it like this:
copydeps --exclude your/exclude-list /path/to/foo -d .
You can tell copydeps to generate a dependency diagram using the --dot
option. If you just want to look at the dependency diagram, add the
--dry-run option to prevent copying:
copydeps --exclude your/exclude-list /path/to/foo --dry-run --dot foo.dot
You can now view the diagram using any Graphviz viewer, such as xdot.
As an example, here is the dependency diagram of Qt5QuickControls2:
copydeps does not detect libraries loaded with dlopen().