Strategies for finding binary dependencies
add symbol strategy
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README.md
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README.md
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Strategies — Feasible:
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* [Statically analyse build recipes](#statically-analyse-build-recipes)
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* [Infer dependencies from symbols extracted from binaries](#infer-dependencies-from-symbols-extracted-from-binaries)
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Strategies — Infeasible:
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likely repository or repositories to be associated with that name.
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✨ **Implementation:** I've started an implementation of this approach in the [meson](./meson) directory.
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### Infer dependencies from symbols extracted from binaries
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Code that has binary dependencies calls into these dependencies using specific symbols. For example, numpy might
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look at the compiled dynamic library `libscipy_openblas64_-8fb3d286.so` for the symbol
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`scipy_openblas_set_num_threads64_`.
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How can we identify that numpy depends on `openblas64`? Searching for the `.so` dynamic library file is not reliable,
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not only because its filename is not predictable, but also because the calling code does not need to call into a
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dynamically linked `openblas64.so` file — the `openblas64` code could even be statically compiled into the same binary
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as the calling code. But the symbols that a library is made up of, such as `scipy_openblas_set_num_threads64_`, _would_
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probably collectively correctly identify the library.
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This strategy is very universally applicable. It would, however, require building some kind of index mapping symbols to
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the libraries they belong to.
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✨ **Implementation:** For a lot more detail on this strategy, see [ecosyste-ms/packages#1261][eco-1261]
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## Strategies — Infeasible
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[cmake]: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake.1.html
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[docker-file]: https://github.com/sissbruecker/linkding/blob/master/docker/default.Dockerfile
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[docker]: https://www.docker.com/
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[eco-1261]: https://github.com/ecosyste-ms/packages/issues/1261
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[endowment]: https://endowment.dev
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[eslint]: https://eslint.org/
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[ffi]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_function_interface