mac-dependencies

Mac-dependencies is a node.js module to "walk" dependencies of an executable or dylib on Mac. It will automatically resolve the @executable_path, @rpath and @loader_path paths to find dependent libraries.

Users can use it to print the dependencies, check which dependencies were missing, and build a DMG by copying dependent libraries of an executable on Mac (see its usage in GeoDa build toolchain).

Usage

1. print_deps()

print_deps(file_path : String, {options : Dict}) : String

Example:

const macdep = require('mac-dependencies');

macdep.print_deps('/usr/lib/libcurl.dylib');

Output:

└─ ✔ libcurl.dylib /usr/lib/libcurl.dylib
   ├─ ✔ libcrypto.42.dylib /usr/lib/libcrypto.42.dylib
   │  └─ ✔ libSystem.B.dylib /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
   ├─ ✔ libssl.44.dylib /usr/lib/libssl.44.dylib
   │  ├─ ✔ libcrypto.42.dylib /usr/lib/libcrypto.42.dylib
   │  │  └─ ✔ libSystem.B.dylib /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
   │  └─ ✔ libSystem.B.dylib /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
   ├─ ✔ libapple_nghttp2.dylib /usr/lib/libapple_nghttp2.dylib
   │  └─ ✔ libSystem.B.dylib /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
   ├─ ✔ libz.1.dylib /usr/lib/libz.1.dylib
   │  └─ ✔ libSystem.B.dylib /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
   └─ ✔ libSystem.B.dylib /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

1.1 Check missing dependencies

Any missing dependencies will be highlighed in the output with a "question mark" icon ❓.

Example:

macdep.print_deps('/Users/xun/test.dylib');

Output:

└─ ✔ test.dylib /Users/xun/test.dylib
   ├─ ❓ libpng16.16.dylib @rpath/libpng16.16.dylib
   └─ ✔ libSystem.B.dylib /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

1.2 Option: search_dirs

For missing dependencies, one can specify a list of search dirs as an option to tell the program to search any missing dependencies.

Example:

var opts = {"search_dirs" : ["/usr/lib", "/usr/local/lib"]};
macdep.print_deps('/Users/xun/test.dylib', opts);

Output:

└─ ✔ test.dylib /Users/xun/test.dylib
   ├─ ✔ libpng16.16.dylib /usr/local/lib/libpng16.16.dylib
   └─ ✔ libSystem.B.dylib /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

1.3 Option: system_dirs

Default value: ['/usr/lib/system', '/Library/System']

One can specify a list of system dirs as an option to tell the program to ignore when searching dependencies.

Example:

var opts = {
    "system_dirs" : ["/usr/lib"], 
    "search_dirs" : ["/usr/lib", "/usr/local/lib"]
};
macdep.print_deps('/Users/xun/test.dylib', opts);

Output:

└─ ✔ test.dylib /Users/xun/test.dylib
   └─ ✔ libpng16.16.dylib /usr/local/lib/libpng16.16.dylib

2. get_deps()

get_deps(file_path : String, {options : dict}) : object

Example:

const macdep = require('mac-dependencies');

var dep = macdep.get_deps('/usr/lib/libcurl.dylib');

Returns a javascript object representing the tree structure of dependencies. For example:

dep {
   // attributes
   this.file_path = '/Users/xun/test.dylib', // 
   this.file_name = 'test.lib', //
   this.is_system = false, //
   this.is_valid = true, //
   this.dependencies = ['/usr/local/lib/libpng16.16.dylib', // a list of dependencies as dep objects
                        '/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib'], 
   this.executable_path = '/Users/xun',
   this.loader_path = '/Users/xun',
   this.r_path = undefined
}

One can traverse this tree structure starting from the return object by get_deps() function, and looping its children in dependencies[].

Contact

Xun Li lixun at gmail.com