The sources contain several documentation files, it's a good idea to look at these files first.
So after obtaining the sources, tools and libraries, the
first place to look at is doc/README.developer,
here you will get the latest infos for Wireshark development for all
supported platforms.
![[Tip]](wsdg_graphics/tip.png) | Tip! |
|---|---|
It is a very good idea, to first test your complete build environment (including running and debugging Wireshark) before doing any changes to the source code (unless otherwise noted). |
The following steps for the first time generation differ on the two major platforms.
Run the autogen.sh script at the top-level wireshark directory to configure your build directory.
./autogen.sh ./configure make
If you need to build with a non-standard configuration, you can use:
./configure --help
to see what options you have.
The first thing to do will be to check the file
config.nmake to determine if it reflects your configuration.
The settings in this file are well documented, so please have a look at
that file.
However, if you've installed the libraries and tools as recommended there
should be no need to edit things here.
Many of the file and directory names used in the build process go past the old 8.3 naming limitations. As a result, you should use the cmd.exe command interpreter instead of the old command.com.
Be sure that your command-line environment is set up to compile
and link with MSVC++. When installing MSVC++, you can have your
system's environment set up to always allow compiling from the
command line, or you can invoke the vcvars32.bat script, which can
usually be found in the VC98\Bin subdirectory of the
directory in which Visual Studio was installed.
You should then cleanup any intermediate files, which are shipped for convenience of Unix users, by typing at the command line prompt (cmd.exe):
> nmake -f Makefile.nmake distclean
After doing this, typing at the command line prompt (cmd.exe):
> nmake -f Makefile.nmake all
will start the whole Wireshark build process.
After the build process has successfully finished, you should find a
wireshark.exe and some other files
in the root directory.