What is the equivalent of Linux's ldd on windows?

Question

What is the equivalent of Linux's ldd on Windows?

see also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7378959/how-to-check-for-dll-dependency — sercxjo, Sep 26 '21 at 08:33

score 65 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 04 '20 at 08:47

65

The dumpbin command can be useful for many things, although in this case dependency walker is probably a little more verbose.

dumpbin /dependents some.dll

Example output:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools>dumpbin /dependents StanPolicy.dll

Dump of file StanPolicy.dll

File Type: DLL

Image has the following dependencies:
mscoree.dll
Summary
    2000 .reloc
    2000 .rsrc
   1E000 .text

edited Mar 04 '20 at 08:47

Kevin

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answered Mar 08 '12 at 14:44

David St Denis

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This is the best option if you have Visual Studio installed. – sakra Dec 09 '15 at 14:50

score 63 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 03 '10 at 02:02

63

Here is Dependency Walker.

http://dependencywalker.com/

answered Jan 03 '10 at 02:02

Daniel A. White

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does anything like ldd exist, for command line only? Looking for something I can use from a prompt. Prefer a small light command, preferably without extra DLLs. – J. M. Becker Oct 17 '11 at 14:49
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It appears that that has a command line interface: http://www.dependencywalker.com/help/html/hidr_command_line_help.htm – Daniel A. White Oct 17 '11 at 14:54
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Syntax looks something like this: depends.exe /c /oc:dependencies.csv /ot:dependencies.txt mydll.dll – Boinst May 21 '13 at 05:13
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Dependency Walker works well, but is a jarring change from the simplicity of ldd (especially if you're used to scripting a tool consume its output and do, say, packaging tasks automatically with it). – zxq9 Jun 27 '15 at 07:53
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Crashes on Windows 10. – mikemaccana May 31 '19 at 21:39

score 43 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 01 '18 at 20:10

43

or the GNU tool :

i586-mingw32msvc-objdump -p  *.exe    | grep 'DLL Name:'

edited Feb 01 '18 at 20:10

whoan

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answered Apr 17 '12 at 15:52

RzR

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Can objdump be used to display the full path? I need something recursively and this requires fullpath for each dependant DLL – INS Jan 24 '13 at 08:26
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objdump only shows you what the file contains. It does not attempt to do any path lookup like `ldd` does. – jørgensen Jul 17 '14 at 12:35

score 14 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 27 '12 at 17:50

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If you're using wine and not real Windows, you can use WINEDEBUG=+loaddll wine <program>.

answered Apr 27 '12 at 17:50

Janus Troelsen

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Developing against Wine to target Windows struck me as so strange an idea I had to give it a try (I primarily target Linux)... and actually it is working out *far* smoother than I expected for prototyping. Very, very cool. – zxq9 Jun 27 '15 at 07:49
Re: development using Wine instead of Windows: note that what works in Wine won't necessarily work on real Windows. I learned this when I forgot to call `GdiplusStartup`, and GDI+ worked without problems in Wine, while on Windows it didn't. I only noticed this mistake after having debugged the program in Wine, trying next to run it in Windows. – Ruslan Jun 03 '17 at 19:29
I test things on Wine all the time, just to avoid restarting and changing OS. However, it's good practice before a major release--or any time you've done something that feels even a little suspicious--to try it out on Windows native as well. – Michael Macha Nov 20 '20 at 13:45

Machta · Answer 5 · 2017-04-22T08:22:04.720

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Newer versions of Git on Windows come packaged with something called Git BASH, which emulates many useful Unix commands including ldd.

It appears that it reports only libraries that can be found. So you can use this to get an overview of where the used libraries are located, but not which are missing.

edited Apr 22 '17 at 08:22

answered Apr 22 '17 at 08:04

Machta

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score 10 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 27 '12 at 17:25

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There is now an ldd in Cygwin. If you have a very old Cygwin version, you will have to use cygcheck.

answered Apr 27 '12 at 17:25

Janus Troelsen

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Yes, but it is not very accurate – Stef Oct 03 '15 at 16:47
Still not very accurate in 2023 - when I run it over and over again on an MSYS2/UCRT executable developed for a customer (that doesn't change at all...), I'll usually get something between 35 and 40 DLLs listed. Every now and then I even get the correct 41 dependencies. – Andrew Henle Jan 30 '23 at 19:52

JohnnyFromBF · Answer 7 · 2016-12-30T08:22:04.093

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I guess the Windows Developer way to do this is to use dumpbin /dependents source.exe. If you have Visual Studio installed you can find it here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin\dumpbin.exe.

edited Dec 30 '16 at 08:22

answered Dec 30 '16 at 08:03

JohnnyFromBF

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Too bad this doesn't show where the dependents are found so you can precisely see which ones are actually used at runtime :(. – rubenvb Jul 30 '17 at 12:12
@rubenvb Process Explorer from SysInternals MS suite has lower-pane view of all DLLs a binary loads including their paths and symbol/dll search. – Kevin Mar 05 '20 at 21:34

score 6 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 28 '20 at 13:34

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For Windows 10 you can use Dependencies - An open-source modern Dependency Walker

https://github.com/lucasg/Dependencies

answered Aug 28 '20 at 13:34

dan.lipsa

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score 2 · Answer 9 · edited Jan 06 '21 at 19:58

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For windows 10, with visual studio 2017, I go in the search bar of windows and type:

"developer Command Prompt for VS 2017" ( a special cmd.exe for Visual studio developer)

This allows to get access to DUMPBIN that should be used with the /IMPORTS tag. For example, in the correct directory:

DUMPBIN /IMPORTS yourfile.exe (others extension may work too)

For me, this list the DLL and the functions used.

Alternatively, you can use the tag \ALL that is much more verbose.

see the microsoft explanation of DUMPBIN:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/imports-dumpbin?view=vs-2019

Example ( with only a part) of the content sended back by the command

edited Jan 06 '21 at 19:58

Mohammad Kanan

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answered Sep 29 '20 at 09:55

Via_fx_24

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the complete example like : `dumpbin /imports *.dll | find /i ".dll"` – Mohammad Kanan Jan 06 '21 at 19:59
Great addition to old answers! – Mohammad Kanan Jan 06 '21 at 20:10
This answer could be a comment to the prior answers, just noting that some users might prefer to sue the developer command prompt. – sage Aug 06 '21 at 16:59

score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 12 '21 at 10:33

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On Windows I use the cmder as terminal for most things (and not powershell/pwsh). For cmder you can simply type "ldd my_executable.exe" and you will see the expected output.

Link to download cmder: https://cmder.net/

answered Aug 12 '21 at 10:33

Malte Ahl

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What is the equivalent of Linux's ldd on windows?

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