dll not found problem

[igagis]

Hi,

I have a strange problem of a DLL being not found. I'm posting the issue here as I don't have any ideas of what else I can try to fix it.

I have an open source library project svgdom which I build for windows in msys2 environment.
I have github actions based CI configured in the github repo. The CI process first builds the library, producing the DLL, then it builds and runs test applications. To run a test application I have to copy the library DLL to the same directory as the test app's executable to make the test app load and link to the dll when it is run.

One can see the failed CI run here: for mingw64 and for mingw32

The strange thing is that it fails in the CI build, but on my local machine all passes successfully.

From the build log we can see that all test apps worked successfully except the one called tst.

The error when trying to run the tst app is as follows:
For mingw64:

D:/a/svgdom/svgdom/tests/tst/out/rel/tests.exe: error while loading shared libraries: libsvgdom.dll: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

For mingw32:

D:/a/svgdom/svgdom/tests/tst/out/rel/tests.exe: error while loading shared libraries: ?: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The libsvgdom.dll file is there right next to tests.exe, that is 100% sure. I have checked that explicitly listing the dir contents on CI machine.

The only difference of the tst application from other test apps (which pass) I can think of is that the main() function in the tst app is provided by another DLL (libtst), not by the main executable. But again, all works fine on my local machine. And, similar tests are working fine for the libtst itself.

And I'll repeat again, the build (and those tests of course) passes successfully on my local machine in msys2 environment.

Any idea of what else can I try?

Thanks in advance!

[Biswa96]

The strange thing is that it fails in the CI build, but on my local machine all passes successfully.

Maybe the same package is installed in your local setup.

[igagis]

@Biswa96 you are actually right! I had the same package installed on my local system. How could I overlook that...? I have just removed it.

But the strange thing remains, it still passes successfully on my local machine...

[igagis]

It looks like the environment configuration is somehow different on the CI machine... but what could be the difference potentially causing the issue?

Any hints on how can I debug the problem?

In the github actions CI I use the https://github.com/msys2/setup-msys2 action to configure the msys2 environment...

[igagis]

I figured out that a third level dependency DLL was missing, not the libsvgdom.dll itself. Now I've got it fixed.
Too bad that in msys2 it does not give information about which DLL file is actually missing.

[Biswa96]

Too bad that in msys2 it does not give information about which DLL file is actually missing.

There is a package ntldd which can provide the dependent DLLs of a EXE or DLL file.

[ZachBacon]

I figured out that a third level dependency DLL was missing, not the libsvgdom.dll itself. Now I've got it fixed.
Too bad that in msys2 it does not give information about which DLL file is actually missing.

Funny enough... Ntldd which is a package, which helps track down dll deps are linked to. So say if you have a basic hello.exe which doesn't link to anything, it'll print out the compiler runtime deps libgcc dll (whatever unwinder is used) and libwinpthreads etc, so it's possible, but you'd have to check every file to make sure dependencies were met for your executable.

[igagis]

Well, it is good that there is at least some tool which allows inspecting dependencies.

But, from error message:

D:/a/svgdom/svgdom/tests/tst/out/rel/tests.exe: error while loading shared libraries: libsvgdom.dll: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I can only understand that libsvgdom.dll is missing, but in reality it misses some other DLL it depends on. I.e. the error message is misleading too.