minidump

What it is and what it does

Minidump is a Python library for parsing and analyzing Microsoft minidump files—the crash dumps and memory snapshots Windows generates when processes fail or are explicitly captured. It provides both a command-line tool for one-shot analysis and an interactive shell for exploring dumped process memory, as well as a library interface (MinidumpFileReader, MinidumpBufferedReader) for programmatic access to the dump's virtual address space. The library understands CPU architecture and can read and search memory with proper integer sizing.

On Windows, the package can also create minidumps directly using the Windows API via ctypes, with support for capturing processes running in different user contexts if you have the required privileges. It has no external runtime dependencies and requires only Python >= 3.6, making it straightforward to install and use for forensics, debugging, and memory analysis workflows.

Use it for:

• Analyze Windows crash dumps to extract process state, threads, exceptions, and memory contents for debugging
• Programmatically search and read virtual memory from a dumped process to extract artifacts or validate memory state
• Create minidumps of running processes on Windows for offline analysis or archival
• Build forensic or incident-response tools that need to parse and inspect Windows process memory snapshots
• Extract module and thread information from crash dumps for post-mortem analysis

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Parses Microsoft minidump files and reads process memory dumps; can also create minidumps on Windows machines via the Windows API.

Yes, if you work with Windows minidumps or need to capture process memory on Windows. The package is stable, has no dependencies, and fills a specific niche in Windows debugging and forensics. Maintenance is dormant but recent enough (last commit January 2025) that it remains usable; however, if you need active support or expect frequent updates, consider the maintenance status.

Install

minidump on PyPI

pip install minidump

uv add minidump

poetry add minidump

Installing minidump

Before you install

Low install friction with no runtime dependencies. Maintenance is dormant—last release was 2024-08-15 and last commit 2025-01-08, but the repository remains active and the package has been stable since its 2018 initial release.

License in practice

MIT license (permissive) means you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in commercial and private projects with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart

pip install minidump

from minidump.minidumpfile import MinidumpFile

with open('dump.dmp', 'rb') as f:
    md = MinidumpFile.parse(f)
    # Access process memory and metadata

Requires Python >= 3.6. Creating minidumps requires Windows with administrator or SeDebugPrivilege; parsing works cross-platform.

Verify before relying

• Whether the package handles all minidump variants (full, mini, heap dumps) or only a subset
• Performance characteristics when working with large dump files
• Compatibility with recent Windows minidump formats beyond what the fact sheet documents

Package facts

Evidence: minidump-0.0.24-py3-none-any.whl

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