How to check for DLL dependency

Question

Sometimes when I m doing a little project I m not careful enough and accidentally add a dependency for a DLL that I am not aware of  When I ship this program to a friend or other people   it doesn t work   because  some DLL  is missing  This is of course because the program can find the DLL on my system  but not on theirs   Is there a way to scan an executable for DLL dependencies or execute the program in a  clean  DLL-free environment for testing to prevent these oops situations

User · Answer

The pedeps project  https   github com brechtsanders pedeps  has a command line tool  copypedeps  for copying your  exe  or  dll  file s  along with all the files it depends on  If you do that on the system where the application works  you should be able to ship it with all it s dependancy DLLs

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Figure out the full file path to the assembly you re trying to work with Press the start button  type  dev   Launch the program called  Developer Command Prompt for VS 2017  In the window that opens  type dumpbin  dependents  path   where  path  is the path you figured out in step 1 press the enter key   Bam  you ve got your dependency information  The window should look like this     Update for VS 2019  you need this package in your VS installation

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If you have the source code  you can use ndepend   http   www ndepend com   It s pricey and does a lot more than analyzing dependencies so it might be overkill for what you are looking for

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Please refer SysInternal toolkit from Microsoft from below link  https   docs microsoft com en-us sysinternals downloads process-explorer  Goto the download folder  Open  Procexp64 exe  as admin privilege  Open Find Menu-   Find Handle or DLL  option or Ctrl F shortcut way

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There is a program called  Depends  If you have cygwin installed  nothing simpler then ldd file exe

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dumpbin from Visual Studio tools  VC bin folder  can help here   dumpbin  dependents your dll file dll

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Try Dependencies  Dec 2019  which is a modern rewrite of the famous Dependency Walker  last update in 2006

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Try  JetBrains dotPeek  It s free

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Please search  depends exe  in google  it s a tiny utility to handle this

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On your development machine  you can execute the program and run Sysinternals Process Explorer  In the lower pane  it will show you the loaded DLLs and the current paths to them which is handy for a number of reasons  If you are executing off your deployment package  it would reveal which DLLs are referenced in the wrong path  i e  weren t packaged correctly    Currently  our company uses Visual Studio Installer projects to walk the dependency tree and output as loose files the program  In VS2013  this is now an extension  https   visualstudiogallery msdn microsoft com 9abe329c-9bba-44a1-be59-0fbf6151054d  We then package these loose files in a more comprehensive installer but at least that setup project all the dot net dependencies and drops them into the one spot and warns you when things are missing

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NDepend was already mentioned by Jesse  if you analyze  NET code  but let s explain exactly how it can help   Is there a program script that can scan an executable for DLL dependencies or execute the program in a  quot clean quot  DLL-free environment for testing to prevent these oops situations   In the NDepend Project Properties panel  you can define what application assemblies to analyze  in green  and NDepend will infer Third-Party assemblies used by application ones  in blue   A list of directories where to search application and third-party assemblies is provided   If a third-party assembly is not found in these directories  it will be in error mode  For example  if I remove the  NET Fx directory C  WINDOWS Microsoft NET Framework v4 0 30319  I can see that  NET Fx third-party assemblies are not resolved   Disclaimer  I work for NDepend

User · Answer

The safest thing is have some clean virtual machine  on which you can test your program  On every version you d like to test  restore the VM to its initial clean value  Then install your program using its setup  and see if it works   Dll problems have different faces  If you use Visual Studio and dynamically link to the CRT  you have to distribute the CRT DLLs  Update your VS  and you have to distribute another version of the CRT  Just checking dependencies is not enough  as you might miss those  Doing a full install on a clean machine is the only safe solution  IMO   If you don t want to setup a full-blown test environment and have Windows 7  you can use XP-Mode as the initial clean machine  and XP-More to duplicate the VM

User · Answer

I can recommend interesting solution for Linux fans  After I explored this solution  I ve switched from DependencyWalker to this   You can use your favorite ldd over Windows-related exe  dll   To do this you need to install Cygwin  basic installation  without additional packages required  on your Windows and then just start Cygwin Terminal  Now you can run your favorite Linux commands  including     ldd your dll file dll   UPD  You can use ldd also through git bash terminal on Windows  No need to install cygwin in case if you have git already installed

User · Answer

In the past  i e  WinXP days   I used to depend rely on DLL Dependency Walker  depends exe  but there are times when I am still not able to determine the DLL issue s    Ideally  we d like to find out before runtime by inspections but if that does not resolve it  or taking too much time   you can try enabling the  loader snap  as described on http   blogs msdn com b junfeng archive 2006 11 20 debugging-loadlibrary-failures aspx and https   msdn microsoft com en-us library windows hardware ff556886 v vs 85  aspx and briefly mentioned LoadLibrary fails  GetLastError no help  WARNING  I ve messed up my Windows in the past fooling around with gflag making it crawl to its knees  you have been forewarned     Note   Loader snap  is per-process so the UI enable won t stay checked  use cdb or glfags -i

[windows] How to check for DLL dependency?

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