3.6. Build Wireshark

The sources contain several documentation files. It’s a good idea to read these files first. After obtaining the sources, tools and libraries, the first place to look at is doc/README.developer. Inside you will find the latest information for Wireshark development for all supported platforms.

[Tip]Build Wireshark before changing anything

It is a very good idea to first test your complete build environment (including running and debugging Wireshark) before making any changes to the source code (unless otherwise noted).

Building Wireshark for the first time depends on your platform.

3.6.1. Building on Unix

The recommended (and fastest) way to build Wireshark is with CMake and Ninja:

# Starting from your Wireshark source directory, create a build directory
# alongside it.
$ cd ..
$ mkdir wireshark-ninja
$ cd wireshark-ninja
# Assumes your source directory is named "wireshark".
$ cmake -G Ninja ../wireshark
$ ninja (or cmake --build .)

If you need to build with a non-standard configuration, you can run

$ cmake -LH ../wireshark

to see what options you have.

3.6.2. Windows Native

Follow the build procedure in Section 2.2.13, “Build Wireshark” to build Wireshark.

After the build process has successfully finished, you should find a Wireshark.exe and some other files in the run\RelWithDebInfo directory.