DepCopy

Linux dependency copy script

This simple script allows you to copy all .so libraries linked to a program to your current working directory. This feature is useful when you want to move a program from one distro to another one which has not all dependencies available for it. Only conditions that must be met are:

• version of glibc on target system cannot be lower than the version on source system. Newer versions of glibc are backwards compatible with older, but not the other way around.
• version of GUI libraries as X Athena Widgets, Wayland, GTK, Qt, ... on target system cannot be lower than versions on source system. It needs some research whether it does always work the other way around.

It uses:

• ldd to fetch list of libraries
• readelf to check whether executable is linked dynamically
• awk/tr to process the output from ldd as string
• and bash of course, as interpreter.

Usage

./depcopy.sh FILE [OPTIONS] < you can put path (relative or absolute) to any dynamic linked program you want in place of FILE and the script will copy all dynamic libraries linked to it to your current working directory.

It supports these arguments:

• -h|--help: print the help file
• --deps|--dependencies: print names of programs whose this script is dependent on and try to locate them (prints either absolute path, or not found string, so they can be easily tracked)
• -b: copy libraries to current working directory, but keep their absolute paths (useful for easy copying on target system)
• -c: copy mode - what happens when the script tries to copy file with name that already exists in the destination folder, supoorts values a - ask, o - overwrite, and n - no-overwrite.

Executable file must be entered as first argument, otherwise the script won't recognize it as pathname. It can be both relative, or absolute path. For arguments that it makes sense to be used without file arg (like --help, --deps, ...), FILE doesn't have to be entered and instead such arg as --help can be entered as first.

This script can exit either with success (0), or an error code:

• 1 - bad format of arguments
• 2 - dependency not found
• 3 - entered executable not found or type mismatch

Warnings and Additional Info

For GUI apps (X Athena Widgets, Wayland, GTK, Qt, ...), this script won't work out-of-box at this stage, because of how are GUI libraries bound to system. It's because version B on target system has some resources open that the version A from source system cannot use, thus rendering such application that uses it unusable with version A when system has version B. The partial solution to this is not copying such libraries (not done int he script yet), or removing the ones copied with this script, so the target system can use its own (and it sure has GUI libraries like GTK, Qt, ..., if you are running desktop and got idea to copy it there).

Also, at this stage, the script copies also glibc, which MUSTN'T be copied to target system and should be removed from working directory after the script copied it there. It's because the target system has its own version of glibc that is bound to the system, and replacing it with another onje from another system will probably brick the system, thus render it unusable.

This script is still in work, and after a definitive release it will include such feature to not copy core/GUI libraries - libraries that shouldn't be copied.

What is planned

• status arg that will print versions of various core libraries, like: glibc, x/wayland, gtk/qt...
• when source library is not found, write error message in the end specifying what libraries are missing
• option for not copying library and its dependencies (entering filename of .so, or level)
• copy symlinks with their source files while keeping absolute path of both