Many a time, ok, well, quite frequently at least I've needed to see what is bringing a dependency into an application or a library I'm working on. At the moment, I'm working on removing some useless dependencies for performance and misc reasons, so I'm finding information like that very helpful.

So, scripting to the rescue.

Use is simple:

burchr@virgin:~/code/scripts(master+)% genlibtree.rb /usr/lib/libQtCore.so
Dependency tree for /usr/lib/libQtCore.so
 /usr/lib/libQtCore.so
* /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0
* /usr/lib/libz.so.1
* /usr/lib/libdl.so.2
* /usr/lib/libgthread-2.0.so.0
** /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0
** /usr/lib/librt.so.1
** /usr/lib/libc.so.6
* /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
** /usr/lib/libm.so.6
** /usr/lib/ld-linux.so.2
** /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1

There's a few gotchas in that it won't list repeated dependencies, only searches /usr/lib, etc - but it more or less works. Patches welcome. I hope you find it useful in your quest to remove unneeded dependencies - it is worthwhile running it over your work, at least, to see what bloat you're pulling in.

(Much thanks to many folks, but especially Thiago Macieria of Qt and other fame, for giving me a bit of a crash course in some of how shared libraries work under the hood.)

edit: I should probably note that this may not necessarily provide a full picture. Shared objects may still be loaded at runtime, and in the case of QtGui, are in the form of things like image plugins and other things. It's still useful, though.

edit 2: since I've had a few people point out that it is horrific ruby, I'd just like to note that yes, I am not in fact a perfectionist when it comes to throwaway tools I write in five minutes. Patches welcome. ;)