Sowhat: global analyzer for dynamic library dependencies
Description
Sowhat is an analysis tool for analyzing dependencies between programs and dynamic libraries in a Solaris environment. It also analyzes dependencies due to hard links, symlinks, scripts, and configuration files. Sowhat runs in two phases.
- First one runs it in the background in a 'discovery' mode in which it discovers dependencies and files them in a dependency database.
- Then one can query against that database to determine several things about an evolving system:
- Which programs use a library.
- All aliases for a specific file or directory, either hard or soft links.
- A list of all files that reference a specific path.
- What changed between the data-gathering run and the present.
Sowhat is useful for a variety of tasks, including:
- Asking 'what-if' questions about potential upgrades: what programs may change function or fail if I delete or update this library?
- Analyzing failures by comparing system configuration to a pre-established baseline: what change could have caused this behavior?
The former tool sothere for analyzing symlink dependencies is now part of sowhat.
For more information, please email me.
Yizhan Sun (ysun@eecs.tufts.edu)
Alva L. Couch (couch@eecs.tufts.edu)
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Tufts University
161 College Avenue
Medford, MA 02155
