Getting the API's for Windows Applications

Bill Medland billmedland at mercuryspeed.com
Tue May 18 10:57:01 CDT 2004


On May 18, 2004 07:19 am, Rolf Kalbermatter wrote:
> Jacobus Erasmus <jacobus at kewlconcepts.co.za> wrote:
> >Is it possible to workout or read the API's that a specific Windows
> >application use ?
> >
> >The theory is that it would be possible to estimate the amount of work
> >needed to get a Windows app to work on Wine by calculating the number of
> >API's that is not working or only half working and estimating the time
> >it would take to correct these API's.
>
> This would be a very rough estimation. Some APIs are simple to implement
> and some are not. The ones not yet in Wine are often of the second class
> but that is not a general rule.
>
> >By running wine-debug it is possible to get the API's used by an
> >application. I'm hoping that there is some simpler way (although I'm not
> >holding my breath) to read the API's used by an application directly
> >from the .exe or .dll.
>
> It really depends. You could walk the import table of the executable
> both the standard and delayed imports and get quite far. dumpbin or
> whatever it is called can do that. However this will not account for
> dynamically imported APIs some applications do, to work for instance around
> API differences between different Windows version. Or another reason might
> be that a certain API is optional and the app should keep running
> eventhough that API is not available on the target system.

And then there is the functionality it accesses via COM

>
> I think to catch those APIs as well only API profiling would help. But
> it may not be the main issue here as the dynamic runtime linking is
> most often done to prevent the application from not starting up when
> the underlyiing API is not present.
>
> Rolf Kalbermatter

-- 
Bill Medland
mailto:billmedland at mercuryspeed.com
http://webhome.idirect.com/~kbmed




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