win_depends

🧩 win_depends is a lightweight tool to analyze DLL and EXE dependencies on Windows. It supports recursive dependency resolution, detection of missing or unused files, and exports to DOT graph format.

1.0.3

• --check-missing reports missing delay-loaded dependencies and their downstream dependencies as warnings instead of missing-file errors.
• A dependency still appears as an error if any non-delay-loaded path requires it.
• Missing files are deduplicated, with importing files and delayed paths shown.
• Duplicate normal/delayed imports retain the normal import's required status.

📦 Installation

pip install win_depends

🚀 Usage Example

Run the tool in a directory containing .dll and .exe files:

win_depends

You can also specify a path to a file or directory:

win_depends ./path/to/myapp.exe
win_depends ./build/bin/

Optional flags can customize the output, such as displaying a dependency tree:

win_depends ./build/bin --tree
```bash
win_depends

Optional flags can customize the output, such as displaying a dependency tree:

win_depends --tree

🔍 Features

• ✅ Analyze imports between .dll and .exe files, including delayed and bound imports
• ✅ Detect forwarded exports and surface forwarding targets directly in tree / missing / invalid outputs (DLL name only)
• ✅ Resolve api-ms-* / ext-ms-* contracts to host DLLs (for example kernelbase.dll) to avoid false missing reports
• ✅ Parallel dependency analysis for faster performance
• ✅ Automatic detection of system DLLs (always enabled)
• ✅ Detect missing dependent files; delay-loaded chains are reported as warnings
• ✅ Detect unused files in directory
• ✅ Tree-style output of dependencies
• ✅ Export to DOT format for graph visualization

🧪 Sample Output

Use win_depends .\demo.exe --check-missing to list missing dependencies. Missing DLLs imported directly with delay loading, or reached only through a delay-loaded ancestor, appear under Missing dependencies (delay-loaded; warning only) with a warning marker. If any non-delay-loaded path requires the same file, it remains an error. Each file is listed once, with its importing files and delayed paths marked [DELAY-LOADED]. These warnings do not guarantee that the affected feature will work when the DLL is actually loaded. The command's exit-code behavior is unchanged.

For a single-file target, paths start at that file. For a directory target, dependency roots are inferred from the full graph, so scanning a DLL does not by itself make its dependencies mandatory. Rootless source cycles are treated conservatively as entry points.

$ win_depends ./demo.exe --tree

└── demo.exe
    ├── user32.dll ❌
    ├── plugin.dll
    │   └── helper.dll
    └── kernel32.dll ❌

Missing dependencies:
  user32.dll
  kernel32.dll