NAME

Devel::SharedLibs -- output of ldd results for $^X and %INC

SYNOPSIS

    # if $ENV{ DEVEL_SHAREDLIBS_PRINT } is true at the end 
    # of execution then print results of runing ldd on 
    # everything in %INC to STDOUT.
    #
    # if $ENV{ DEVEL_SHAREDLIBS_PATH } is true then it 
    # will be used for the list instead of stdout.

    use Devel::SharedLibs;

    # this can be mangled any time during execution it is not
    # checked until END time.
    #
    # true dumps list to stdout or path; false does nothing.

    $ENV{ DEVEL_SHAREDLIBS_PRINT } = 1;

    __END__

    # the argument to import overrides the environment 
    # variable setting.

    # output in ./libfiles.out insted of stdout:

    use Devel::SharedLibs qw( ./libfiles.out );

    # or

    $ENV{ DEVEL_SHAREDLIBS_PATH } = './libfiles.out';

    # or, of course, set them both in the shell before
    # running the program:

    DEVEL_SHAREDLIBS_PRINT=1 \
    DEVEL_SHAREDLIBS_PATH='./libfiles.out' \
    your_perl_program;

DESCRIPTION

Initial Sanity Checks

Aside from failing to open the output file, lack of "ldd" on the user's path will cause this to fail. When DEVEL_SHAREDLIBS_PRINT is true an intiail check of "ldd --version" is run. If this returns non-zero then a failure message printed.

Output

All this does it get a unique output from running "ldd" on all of the paths in values %INC. The scan is done at END time to ensure that anything pulled in via dynamic loading is listed.

Ouptut includes the executable path ("$^X") and the executable path ($0, which may have been munged during execution).

For example, to see which shared object lib's (.so files) perl itself is linked with use:

    #!/usr/bin/env  perl

    use Devel::SharedLibs;
    __END__

which outputs something like:

    $ DEVEL_SHAREDLIBS_PRINT=1 perl t/bin/exec-stdout
    # ldd '/opt/perl/5.22/bin/perl', 't/bin/exec-stdout'
    /lib64/libc.so.6
    /lib64/libcrypt.so.1
    /lib64/libdl.so.2
    /lib64/libm.so.6
    /lib64/libnsl.so.1
    /lib64/libpthread.so.0
    /lib64/libutil.so.1

Fine, but, why bother?

A truly idiotic thing about most linux container doc's (Docker is a great example, but not alone in this) is putting a full copy of the OS as a 'base layer' for the container. The claimed reason is having access to necessary shared object lib's in the distro.

Catch: Aside from security and bloat issues, it simply does not work. Problem is that there is no gurarantee that the executables being run on the container system were complied on the same distro with compatable lib's.

A really simple fix is to build the container using whatever .so files are actually *used* by the executable.

For something running #!perl this can be done by examining the values of %^X and %INC (i.e., included paths) with ldd.

At the very least it'll give you a good place to start. For a an reasonable set of modules (i.e., the usuall collection of files that go along with a crawler, PSGI or CGI web back end, or log watcher) this runs in the 10MB - 20MB range (vs. 1GB or more for a full linux distro).

CAVEAT UTILITOR

• This is probably only useful to use once as there is no bookkeeping of the output path: the path is examined once at END time based on the arguments to the last call to import. Then again, it is probably only useful to put this in #! code anway, so this does not seem to be a major problem [anyone who finds it such can warn me and we will find a better solution].

• You will require a usable ldd to run this. Any general-purpose *NIX system from the last 30 years should have one; if you are running an embedded system (e.g., openwrt, andriod) this may not work.

• This will help deal with so's, it will not help you if libc or the kernel headers are far enough out of sync. Most of the time using something based on lxc the libc and kernel versions are close enough that it won't kill you.

SEE ALSO

ldd(1)

Speicfics of running ldd on your system.

How to use this with Docker

Brief explanation of building a '-lib' image for docker using ldd output:

perldoc perlvar

Description of $^X variable in Perl.

<http://www.slideshare.net/lembark/shared-object-images-in-docker-when-what-you-need-is-what-you-want>

AUTHOR

Steven Lembark <lembark@wrkhors.com>

License

This package is licensed under the same terms as Perl-5.22 or any later version of Perl.