Tech Info

ShowDep is a dependency checking utility for Win32 modules. It analyses given module, gathering information about its version, PE headers, sections, imports and exports. This module becomes a root of the module hierarchy. Then ShowDep walks through module imports and forwarded exports and investigates all dependency modules in the same manner recursively. The term 'dependency' denotes a module containing exported functions that: - imported by given module - forwarded by given module - loaded dynamically by given module

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Starting from version 3.0 ShowDep handles dynamic module dependencies, when given module dynamically loads its dependency via a LoadLibrary() type technique. Showdep detects this type of dependency by means of loading the application as a running process and monitoring its activity.

Starting from version 4.0 ShowDep handles COM calls made by application being traced. It shows all COM servers requested by the specified application, including the calls that failed for some reason.

This recursion continues until all modules and their dependencies have been processed. To prevent an overbloated module hierarchy tree and possible infinite circular loops with dependent modules, ShowDep stops processing a given branch of the tree when it reaches a module that it has already processed somewhere else in that branch.

After processing the dependency tree, ShowDep shows you the entire module hierarchy and offers you to choose the hierarchy item you are interested in. You just click at the chosen module and get all the information about it.

First release of ShowDep was published in April 1998 as freeware. All changes since November 1998 are listed in history.txt.

ShowDep.com 2000