It depends on what exactly is meant by "detect library dependencies".
The ldd
command works on shared libraries, not just on executables. It will display the dependencies of a shared library declared when the library was built:
$ ldd /usr/lib/libgtk-3.so
linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffff8fff000)
libgdk-3.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-3.so.0 (0x00007f43fcf47000)
libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f43fcd43000)
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0x00007f43fcb36000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00007f43fc7fc000)
...
A library can have undefined symbols that are obtained by linking with further libraries not declared as dependencies. You can use objdump -T
or nm -D
to show the dynamic symbols - undefined symbols (those that should come from other libraries) will show up as *UND*
:
$ objdump -T /usr/lib/libgtk-3.so | head
/usr/lib/libgtk-3.so: file format elf64-x86-64
DYNAMIC SYMBOL TABLE:
0000000000066e38 l d .init 0000000000000000 .init
0000000000000000 DF *UND* 0000000000000000 g_param_spec_object
0000000000000000 DF *UND* 0000000000000000 g_utf8_validate
0000000000000000 DF *UND* 0000000000000000 g_date_get_month
0000000000000000 DF *UND* 0000000000000000 g_bookmark_file_get_visited
0000000000000000 DF *UND* 0000000000000000 g_value_get_float
From these symbol names it should be possible to deduce undeclared library dependencies.
Libraries that use pkg-config
or similar configuration mechanism sometimes fail to declare their dependencies at build-time, but declare the dependencies to pkg-config
, relying on the library users to use the tool to get the dependencies. pkg-config --libs
will list the dependencies in the format understood by the compiler:
$ pkg-config --libs gtk+-3.0
-lgtk-3 -lgdk-3 -latk-1.0 -lgio-2.0 -lpangocairo-1.0 -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lcairo-gobject -lpango-1.0 -lcairo -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0