Hierarchical ldd(1)

gcc, gentoo, ldd, linker, linux

Solution

If you are running Portage≥2.2 with `FEATURES=preserve-libs`, you should rarely ever need `revdep-rebuild` anymore as old `.so.`vers will be preserved as needed (though you still need to rebuild carefully, as stuff still goes kaboom when `libA.so.0` wants `libC.so.0` and `libB.so.0` wants `libC.so.1` and some binary wants both `libA.so.0` and `libB.so.0`).

That being said, what `ldd` does is to get the dynamic linker to do load the executable or library as it usually would, but print out some info along the way. This is a recursive "binary needs library needs other library&hellip" search, because that's what the dynamic linker does.

I'm currently running Linux/ppc32; on Linux/x86, the dynamic linker is usually `/lib/ld-linux.so.2`, and on Linux/x86_64, the dynamic linker is usually `/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2`. Here, I call it directly just to hammer in the point that all `ldd` is nothing more than a shell script that calls upon the dynamic linker to perform its magic.

$ /lib/ld.so.1 /sbin/badblocks
Usage: /sbin/badblocks [-b block_size] [-i input_file] [-o output_file] [-svwnf]
       [-c blocks_at_once] [-d delay_factor_between_reads] [-e max_bad_blocks]
       [-p num_passes] [-t test_pattern [-t test_pattern [...]]]
       device [last_block [first_block]]
$ LD_TRACE_LOADED_OBJECTS=1 /lib/ld.so.1 /sbin/badblocks
        linux-vdso32.so.1 =>  (0x00100000)
        libext2fs.so.2 => /lib/libext2fs.so.2 (0x0ffa8000)
        libcom_err.so.2 => /lib/libcom_err.so.2 (0x0ff84000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x0fdfa000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x0fdc0000)
        /lib/ld.so.1 (0x48000000)
$ LD_TRACE_LOADED_OBJECTS=1 /lib/ld.so.1 /lib/libcom_err.so.2
        linux-vdso32.so.1 =>  (0x00100000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x6ffa2000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x6fe18000)
        /lib/ld.so.1 (0x203ba000)
$ grep -l pthread /sbin/badblocks /lib/libcom_err.so.2
/lib/libcom_err.so.2

`/sbin/badblocks` doesn't list `libpthread.so.0` as a library dependency, but it gets pulled in by `libcom_err.so.2`.

Is your problem that `ldd` doesn't output a nice-looking dependency tree? Use `ldd -v`.

$ LD_TRACE_LOADED_OBJECTS=1 LD_VERBOSE=1 /lib/ld.so.1 /sbin/badblocks
        linux-vdso32.so.1 =>  (0x00100000)
        libext2fs.so.2 => /lib/libext2fs.so.2 (0x0ffa8000)
        libcom_err.so.2 => /lib/libcom_err.so.2 (0x0ff84000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x0fdfa000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x0fdc0000)
        /lib/ld.so.1 (0x201f9000)

        Version information:
        /sbin/badblocks:
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.2) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.4) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.1) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.0) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.3.4) => /lib/libc.so.6
        /lib/libext2fs.so.2:
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.1.3) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.4) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.3) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.2) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.1) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.0) => /lib/libc.so.6
        /lib/libcom_err.so.2:
                ld.so.1 (GLIBC_2.3) => /lib/ld.so.1
                libpthread.so.0 (GLIBC_2.1) => /lib/libpthread.so.0
                libpthread.so.0 (GLIBC_2.0) => /lib/libpthread.so.0
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.1.3) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.4) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.1) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.0) => /lib/libc.so.6
        /lib/libc.so.6:
                ld.so.1 (GLIBC_PRIVATE) => /lib/ld.so.1
                ld.so.1 (GLIBC_2.3) => /lib/ld.so.1
        /lib/libpthread.so.0:
                ld.so.1 (GLIBC_2.3) => /lib/ld.so.1
                ld.so.1 (GLIBC_2.1) => /lib/ld.so.1
                ld.so.1 (GLIBC_PRIVATE) => /lib/ld.so.1
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.1.3) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.3.4) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.4) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.1) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.3.2) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.2) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_PRIVATE) => /lib/libc.so.6
                libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.0) => /lib/libc.so.6

If you want, you can read the ELF headers directly instead of depending on the dynamic linker.

$ readelf -d /sbin/badblocks | grep NEEDED
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libext2fs.so.2]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libcom_err.so.2]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libc.so.6]
$ readelf -d /lib/libcom_err.so.2 | grep NEEDED
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libpthread.so.0]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [libc.so.6]
 0x00000001 (NEEDED)                     Shared library: [ld.so.1]

You can also `man ld.so` for other cute tricks you can play with `glibc`'s dynamic linker.

Problem

Due to using Gentoo, it often happens that after an update programs are linked against old versions of libraries. Normally, revdep-rebuild helps resolving that, but this time it's a dependency on a python library, and `python-updater` won't pick it up. Is there a "hierarchical" variant of `ldd` which shows me what shared library depends on which another shared library? Most of the time libraries and executables are linked only against a handful of other shared libraries, which in turn were linked against a handful, turning the library dependency into a big list. I want to know which dependency I've got to rebuild with the new version of another library that I upgraded.

Original source