Find out dependencies of all DLLs?

Question

I have a collection of DLLs(say 20). How do I find out all the DLLs on which one specific DLL (say DLL A) is depending upon?

Answer 1

If you mean programmatically, use Assembly.GetReferencedAssemblies .

You can use that recursively to find all the assemblies you need. (So you find the dependencies of X, then the dependencies of the dependencies, etc.)

Answer 2

Since the question is tagged "C#", I would assume you are talking about managed dlls (assemblies). In that case, dependencywalker is not useful. If you want to do that with a program, good ones are dotPeek by JetBrians and Reflector by RedGate. Or you can even use the object inspector in Visual Studio.

However, it can be a long process and cumbersome too. I would write a short C# program/F# script that uses Assembly.GetReferencedAssemblies , as Jon mentioned.

If instead you want to examine native DLLs dependencies with a program (C# code), you have to walk the examine the PE file (the MS dll and exe file format) and its IAT (import address table). Not easy, but not impossible...

I would start here on MSDN and here to understand PE sections, and use a managed library to read it (there are many, including some from the Mono project (I'm thinking of Cecil , it should work with native binaries too); in the past I have used this one from the good John Gough.

Answer 3

You can use dependency walker http://www.dependencywalker.com to figure this out. Take note on the difference between x32 and x64 though.

Dependency Walker is a free utility that scans any 32-bit or 64-bit Windows module (exe, dll, ocx, sys, etc.) and builds a hierarchical tree diagram of all dependent modules.

Answer 4

All answer credit goes to previous authors for the usage of Assembly.GetReferencedAssemblies . This is just a write-and-forget C# console app that works solely for .NET assemblies. return 0 on assemblies you were able to check, and when successful, outputs them to STDOUT. Everything else will return 1 and print some kind of error output. You can grab the gist here .

using System;
using System.Reflection;
using System.IO;
namespace DotNetInspectorGadget
{
    class DotNetInspectorGadget 
    {
        static int Main(string[] args) 
        {
          if(args.GetLength(0) < 1)
          {
            Console.WriteLine("Add a single parameter that is your" +
            " path to the file you want inspected.");
            return 1;
          }
          try {
                var assemblies = Assembly.LoadFile(@args[0]).GetReferencedAssemblies();

                if (assemblies.GetLength(0) > 0)
                {
                  foreach (var assembly in assemblies)
                  {
                    Console.WriteLine(assembly);
                  }
                  return 0;
                }
          }
          catch(Exception e) {
            Console.WriteLine("An exception occurred: {0}", e.Message);
            return 1;
          } finally{}

            return 1;
        }
    }
}

Usage:

call %cd%\dotnet_inspector_gadget.exe C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_64\Microsoft.ConfigCI.Commands\v4.0_10.0.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35\Microsoft.ConfigCI.Commands.dll

Output:

 mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 System.Xml, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 System.Management.Automation, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35 System.Core, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 System.Security, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a System.Management, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a 

Answer 5

对于.NET程序集，一个很棒的工具来查看程序集所依赖的程序集是AsmSpy 。

Answer 6

If you want the DLL's (the files) then, Assembly.GetReferencedAssemblies will also return the .Net Framework assemblies.

Here is a simple code snippet that will get the dll's it can find in the current directory (and also include some other related files):

private readonly string[] _extensions = { ".dll", ".exe", ".pdb", ".dll.config", ".exe.config" };

private string[] GetDependentFiles(Assembly assembly)
{
    AssemblyName[] asm = assembly.GetReferencedAssemblies();
    List<string> paths = new List<string>(asm.Length);
    for (int t = asm.Length - 1; t >= 0; t--)
    {
        for (int e = _extensions.Length - 1; e >= 0; e--)
        {
            string path = Path.GetFullPath(asm[t].Name + _extensions[e]);
            if (File.Exists(path)) paths.Add(path);
        }
    }

    return paths.ToArray();
}

You can call it like so: MessageBox.Show(string.Join("\\r\\n", GetDependentFiles(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly())));