CMake: how to determine all the .DLL/.SO files that are need for an executable?

Question

Let's assume my program needs several DLL's to work. I should provide that DLLs to the user in my distribution. For now I need QtCore4.DLL, QtGui4.DLL, msvcp90.DLL, msvcr90.DLL, mylib.DLL, Kernel32.DLL...

Would be nice if CMake could get full list of DLLs (or .SO) files. Then I would remove items like "Kernel32.DLL" from that list and copy the DLLs to my distribution.

I can't guarantee the next build will be done on the same version of the Visual Studio, so hard-coding paths like "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\redist\x86\Microsoft.VC90.CRT" or "E:\Qt\4.6.3" is not good for searching for the DLLs.

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can use Dependency Walker on windows (or the cmd-line dumpbin tool from visual studio). However this is not really a CMake solution and there is not really standard solution with Cmake.

There is, however, the InstallRequiredSystemLibraries module, which you can use to get the system dlls (msvc[r|p]90.dll with msvc and mingw10.dll with mingw).

Answer 2

As suggested by Andre there is InstallRequiredSystemLibraries for finding/installing the correct C/C++ runtime. There is also BundleUtilities that can be used to find the other dependencies of your application, library and/or plugins.

It can never pick things up like runtime loaded plugins, but you can add them along with the library directories that should be used. In the most recent versions of CMake quite a few improvements have been made to make BundleUtilities more reliable on all platforms.