Provided by: dpkg-dev_1.21.1ubuntu2.3_all bug

NAME

       dpkg-shlibdeps - generate shared library substvar dependencies

SYNOPSIS

       dpkg-shlibdeps [option...] [-e] executable [option...]

DESCRIPTION

       dpkg-shlibdeps calculates shared library dependencies for executables named in its
       arguments. The dependencies are added to the substitution variables file debian/substvars
       as variable names shlibs:dependency-field where dependency-field is a dependency field
       name. Any other variables starting with shlibs: are removed from the file.

       dpkg-shlibdeps has two possible sources of information to generate dependency information.
       Either symbols files or shlibs files. For each binary that dpkg-shlibdeps analyzes, it
       finds out the list of libraries that it's linked with.  Then, for each library, it looks
       up either the symbols file, or the shlibs file (if the former doesn't exist or if
       debian/shlibs.local contains the relevant dependency). Both files are supposed to be
       provided by the library package and should thus be available as
       /var/lib/dpkg/info/package.symbols or /var/lib/dpkg/info/package.shlibs. The package name
       is identified in two steps: find the library file on the system (looking in the same
       directories that ld.so would use), then use dpkg -S library-file to lookup the package
       providing the library.

   Symbols files
       Symbols files contain finer-grained dependency information by providing the minimum
       dependency for each symbol that the library exports. The script tries to find a symbols
       file associated to a library package in the following places (first match is used):

       debian/*/DEBIAN/symbols
           Shared library information generated by the current build process that also invoked
           dpkg-shlibdeps.  They are generated by dpkg-gensymbols(1).  They are only used if the
           library is found in a package's build tree. The symbols file in that build tree takes
           precedence over symbols files from other binary packages.

       /etc/dpkg/symbols/package.symbols.arch
       /etc/dpkg/symbols/package.symbols
           Per-system overriding shared library dependency information.  arch is the architecture
           of the current system (obtained by dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_ARCH).

       Output from “dpkg-query --control-path package symbols”
           Package-provided shared library dependency information.  Unless overridden by
           --admindir, those files are located in /var/lib/dpkg.

       While scanning the symbols used by all binaries, dpkg-shlibdeps remembers the (biggest)
       minimal version needed for each library. At the end of the process, it is able to write
       out the minimal dependency for every library used (provided that the information of the
       symbols files are accurate).

       As a safe-guard measure, a symbols file can provide a Build-Depends-Package meta-
       information field and dpkg-shlibdeps will extract the minimal version required by the
       corresponding package in the Build-Depends field and use this version if it's higher than
       the minimal version computed by scanning symbols.

   Shlibs files
       Shlibs files associate directly a library to a dependency (without looking at the
       symbols). It's thus often stronger than really needed but very safe and easy to handle.

       The dependencies for a library are looked up in several places. The first file providing
       information for the library of interest is used:

       debian/shlibs.local
           Package-local overriding shared library dependency information.

       /etc/dpkg/shlibs.override
           Per-system overriding shared library dependency information.

       debian/*/DEBIAN/shlibs
           Shared library information generated by the current build process that also invoked
           dpkg-shlibdeps.  They are only used if the library is found in a package's build tree.
           The shlibs file in that build tree takes precedence over shlibs files from other
           binary packages.

       Output from “dpkg-query --control-path package shlibs”
           Package-provided shared library dependency information.  Unless overridden by
           --admindir, those files are located in /var/lib/dpkg.

       /etc/dpkg/shlibs.default
           Per-system default shared library dependency information.

       The extracted dependencies are then directly used (except if they are filtered out because
       they have been identified as duplicate, or as weaker than another dependency).

OPTIONS

       dpkg-shlibdeps interprets non-option arguments as executable names, just as if they'd been
       supplied as -eexecutable.

       -eexecutable
           Include dependencies appropriate for the shared libraries required by executable.
           This option can be used multiple times.

       -ldirectory
           Prepend directory to the list of directories to search for private shared libraries
           (since dpkg 1.17.0). This option can be used multiple times.

           Note: Use this option instead of setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH, as that environment variable
           is used to control the run-time linker and abusing it to set the shared library paths
           at build-time can be problematic when cross-compiling for example.

       -ddependency-field
           Add dependencies to be added to the control file dependency field dependency-field.
           (The dependencies for this field are placed in the variable shlibs:dependency-field.)

           The -ddependency-field option takes effect for all executables after the option, until
           the next -ddependency-field.  The default dependency-field is Depends.

           If the same dependency entry (or set of alternatives) appears in more than one of the
           recognized dependency field names Pre-Depends, Depends, Recommends, Enhances or
           Suggests then dpkg-shlibdeps will automatically remove the dependency from all fields
           except the one representing the most important dependencies.

       -pvarname-prefix
           Start substitution variables with varname-prefix: instead of shlibs:.  Likewise, any
           existing substitution variables starting with varname-prefix: (rather than shlibs:)
           are removed from the substitution variables file.

       -O[filename]
           Print substitution variable settings to standard output (or filename if specified,
           since dpkg 1.17.2), rather than being added to the substitution variables file
           (debian/substvars by default).

       -ttype
           Prefer shared library dependency information tagged for the given package type. If no
           tagged information is available, falls back to untagged information. The default
           package type is deb. Shared library dependency information is tagged for a given type
           by prefixing it with the name of the type, a colon, and whitespace.

       -Llocal-shlibs-file
           Read overriding shared library dependency information from local-shlibs-file instead
           of debian/shlibs.local.

       -Tsubstvars-file
           Write substitution variables in substvars-file; the default is debian/substvars.

       -v  Enable verbose mode (since dpkg 1.14.8).  Numerous messages are displayed to explain
           what dpkg-shlibdeps does.

       -xpackage
           Exclude the package from the generated dependencies (since dpkg 1.14.8).  This is
           useful to avoid self-dependencies for packages which provide ELF binaries (executables
           or library plugins) using a library contained in the same package. This option can be
           used multiple times to exclude several packages.

       -Spackage-build-dir
           Look into package-build-dir first when trying to find a library (since dpkg 1.14.15).
           This is useful when the source package builds multiple flavors of the same library and
           you want to ensure that you get the dependency from a given binary package. You can
           use this option multiple times: directories will be tried in the same order before
           directories of other binary packages.

       -Ipackage-build-dir
           Ignore package-build-dir when looking for shlibs, symbols, and shared library files
           (since dpkg 1.18.5).  You can use this option multiple times.

       --ignore-missing-info
           Do not fail if dependency information can't be found for a shared library (since dpkg
           1.14.8).  Usage of this option is discouraged, all libraries should provide dependency
           information (either with shlibs files, or with symbols files) even if they are not yet
           used by other packages.

       --warnings=value
           value is a bit field defining the set of warnings that can be emitted by dpkg-
           shlibdeps (since dpkg 1.14.17).  Bit 0 (value=1) enables the warning “symbol sym used
           by binary found in none of the libraries”, bit 1 (value=2) enables the warning
           “package could avoid a useless dependency” and bit 2 (value=4) enables the warning
           “binary should not be linked against library”.  The default value is 3: the first two
           warnings are active by default, the last one is not. Set value to 7 if you want all
           warnings to be active.

       --admindir=dir
           Change the location of the dpkg database (since dpkg 1.14.0).  The default location is
           /var/lib/dpkg.

       -?, --help
           Show the usage message and exit.

       --version
           Show the version and exit.

ENVIRONMENT

       DPKG_COLORS
           Sets the color mode (since dpkg 1.18.5).  The currently accepted values are: auto
           (default), always and never.

       DPKG_NLS
           If set, it will be used to decide whether to activate Native Language Support, also
           known as internationalization (or i18n) support (since dpkg 1.19.0).  The accepted
           values are: 0 and 1 (default).

DIAGNOSTICS

   Warnings
       Since dpkg-shlibdeps analyzes the set of symbols used by each binary of the generated
       package, it is able to emit warnings in several cases. They inform you of things that can
       be improved in the package. In most cases, those improvements concern the upstream sources
       directly. By order of decreasing importance, here are the various warnings that you can
       encounter:

       symbol sym used by binary found in none of the libraries.
           The indicated symbol has not been found in the libraries linked with the binary. The
           binary is most likely a library and it needs to be linked with an additional library
           during the build process (option -llibrary of the linker).

       binary contains an unresolvable reference to symbol sym: it's probably a plugin
           The indicated symbol has not been found in the libraries linked with the binary. The
           binary is most likely a plugin and the symbol is probably provided by the program that
           loads this plugin. In theory a plugin doesn't have any SONAME but this binary does
           have one and as such it could not be clearly identified as such. However the fact that
           the binary is stored in a non-public directory is a strong indication that's it's not
           a normal shared library. If the binary is really a plugin, then disregard this
           warning. But there's always the possibility that it's a real library and that programs
           linking to it are using an RPATH so that the dynamic loader finds it. In that case,
           the library is broken and needs to be fixed.

       package could avoid a useless dependency if binary was not linked against library (it uses
       none of the library's symbols)
           None of the binaries that are linked with library use any of the symbols provided by
           the library. By fixing all the binaries, you would avoid the dependency associated to
           this library (unless the same dependency is also generated by another library that is
           really used).

       package could avoid a useless dependency if binaries were not linked against library (they
       use none of the library's symbols)
           Exactly the same as the above warning, but for multiple binaries.

       binary should not be linked against library (it uses none of the library's symbols)
           The binary is linked to a library that it doesn't need. It's not a problem but some
           small performance improvements in binary load time can be obtained by not linking this
           library to this binary. This warning checks the same information as the previous one
           but does it for each binary instead of doing the check globally on all binaries
           analyzed.

   Errors
       dpkg-shlibdeps will fail if it can't find a public library used by a binary or if this
       library has no associated dependency information (either shlibs file or symbols file). A
       public library has a SONAME and is versioned (libsomething.so.X). A private library (like
       a plugin) should not have a SONAME and doesn't need to be versioned.

       couldn't find library library-soname needed by binary (its RPATH is 'rpath')
           The binary uses a library called library-soname but dpkg-shlibdeps has been unable to
           find the library.  dpkg-shlibdeps creates a list of directories to check as following:
           directories listed in the RPATH of the binary, directories added by the -l option,
           directories listed in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, cross multiarch
           directories (ex. /lib/arm64-linux-gnu, /usr/lib/arm64-linux-gnu), standard public
           directories (/lib, /usr/lib), directories listed in /etc/ld.so.conf, and obsolete
           multilib directories (/lib32, /usr/lib32, /lib64, /usr/lib64).  Then it checks those
           directories in the package's build tree of the binary being analyzed, in the packages'
           build trees indicated with the -S command-line option, in other packages' build trees
           that contains a DEBIAN/shlibs or DEBIAN/symbols file and finally in the root
           directory.  If the library is not found in any of those directories, then you get this
           error.

           If the library not found is in a private directory of the same package, then you want
           to add the directory with -l. If it's in another binary package being built, you want
           to make sure that the shlibs/symbols file of this package is already created and that
           -l contains the appropriate directory if it also is in a private directory.

       no dependency information found for library-file (used by binary).
           The library needed by binary has been found by dpkg-shlibdeps in library-file but
           dpkg-shlibdeps has been unable to find any dependency information for that library. To
           find out the dependency, it has tried to map the library to a Debian package with the
           help of dpkg -S library-file.  Then it checked the corresponding shlibs and symbols
           files in /var/lib/dpkg/info/, and in the various package's build trees
           (debian/*/DEBIAN/).

           This failure can be caused by a bad or missing shlibs or symbols file in the package
           of the library. It might also happen if the library is built within the same source
           package and if the shlibs files has not yet been created (in which case you must fix
           debian/rules to create the shlibs before calling dpkg-shlibdeps). Bad RPATH can also
           lead to the library being found under a non-canonical name (example:
           /usr/lib/openoffice.org/../lib/libssl.so.0.9.8 instead of /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.8)
           that's not associated to any package, dpkg-shlibdeps tries to work around this by
           trying to fallback on a canonical name (using realpath(3)) but it might not always
           work. It's always best to clean up the RPATH of the binary to avoid problems.

           Calling dpkg-shlibdeps in verbose mode (-v) will provide much more information about
           where it tried to find the dependency information. This might be useful if you don't
           understand why it's giving you this error.

SEE ALSO

       deb-shlibs(5), deb-symbols(5), dpkg-gensymbols(1).