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ELFDEPS(1) General Commands Manual ELFDEPS(1)

NAME

elfdeps - Dependency generator for ELF binaries

SYNOPSIS

elfdeps <operation> [options]

elfdeps <operation> [options] [FILE] ...

DESCRIPTION

elfdeps is a dependency generator for ELF executables and dynamic shared object (DSO) files. The filenames can be received on the standard input (when used as a generator), or command line arguments for testing convenience.

elfdeps encodes information stored in ELF files into a format suitable for use in RPM dependencies. The main interest areas are DT_SONAME, DT_NEEDED fields of the SHT_DYNAMIC section, and symbol versioning information in the SHT_GNU_verdef and SHT_GNU_verneed sections.

elfdeps is not normally invoked directly, but doing so can be useful for troubleshooting dependency generation and developing new dependency generators. The installation directory of elfdeps can be determined with rpm -E "%{_rpmconfigdir}".

This man page describes the options specific to this generator, see rpm-dependency-generators(7) for information about the overall mechanism.

OPERATIONS

-P, --provides,

Print the provides dependencies.

-R, --requires

Print the requires dependencies.

ARGUMENTS

FILE

An ELF file. Other file types are silently ignored.

OPTIONS

--no-fake-soname

Do not emit a fake soname for DSOs that don't set DT_SONAME. By default, elfdeps generates a soname from the filename for DSOs that do not have one. Only effective when printing provides dependencies.

--no-filter-soname

Do not filter sonames. By default, elfdeps does some sanity checking to filter out redundant and/or invalid soname entries. Only effective when printing provides dependencies.

-m, --multifile

Use multifile protocol for output. See rpm-dependency-generators(7).

--require-interp

Emit a requires dependency for the ELF interpreter (PT_INTERP), if there is one. Only effective when printing requires dependencies.

--soname-only

Emit only the soname (DT_SONAME) of a DSO, omitting any symbol versioning information. Only effective when printing provides dependencies.

OUTPUT

See Protocols in rpm-dependency-generators(7). By default, singlefile protocol is used, but the multifile protocol can be enabled with the --multifile option.

EXIT STATUS

On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

EXAMPLES

elfdeps --requires /bin/ls

Print ELF-level requires dependencies of the /bin/ls executable.

find mylib-1.0-build/BUILDROOT --name "*.so*" | elfdeps -P --multifile

Print ELF-level provides dependencies of all shared libraries inside the mylib-1.0-build/BUILDROOT directory, using the multifile generator protocol.

SEE ALSO

rpmbuild(1) rpm-dependency-generators(7) elf(5) readelf(1)

http://www.rpm.org/

2026-08-20 RPM 6.1.0