Wireshark’s build environment can be configured using CMake on various UNIX-like platforms, including Linux, macOS, and *BSD, and on Windows. CMake is designed to support out-of-tree builds - so much so that in-tree builds do not work properly in all cases. Along with being cross-platform, CMake supports many build tools and environments including traditional make, Ninja, and MSBuild.

Building with CMake typically includes creating a build directory and specifying a generator, aka a build tool. For example, to build Wireshark using Ninja in the directory wireshark-ninja you might run the following commands:

# 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 .)

Using CMake on Windows is described further in Section 2.3.1.9, “Generate the build files”.

Along with specifying a generator with the -G flag you can set variables using the -D flag. Useful variables and generators include the following:

You can list all build variables (with help) by running cmake -LH [options] ../<Name_of_WS_source_dir>. This lists the cache of build variables after the cmake run. To only view the current cache, add option -N.

Depending on your needs, it might be useful to save your CMake configuration options in a file outside your build directory. CMake supports this via its presets option.

Wireshark ships a CMakePresets.json with a predefined ninja_ccache preset that uses Ninja as the generator and enables ccache. This preset sets the build directory to ${sourceDir}/build. You can use it directly:

cmake --preset ninja_ccache
cmake --build build

To customize the build directory or other settings without modifying the shared CMakePresets.json, create a CMakeUserPresets.json file in the source root (it is already listed in .gitignore). Use inherits to extend the shipped preset and override only what you need.

For example, on macOS or Linux, to use an out-of-tree build directory, enable ccache and set a custom Qt path:

{
  "version": 4,
  "configurePresets": [
    {
      "name": "mydev",
      "displayName": "Local development",
      "inherits": "ninja_ccache",
      "binaryDir": "${sourceDir}/../build",
      "cacheVariables": {
        "ENABLE_CCACHE": "ON"
      },
      "environment": {
        "CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH": "/usr/local/Qt6"
      }
    }
  ]
}

On Windows, you might want to use the Visual Studio generator and a different build directory instead. The inherits field still pulls in cache variables like ENABLE_CCACHE from the base preset, while letting you override the generator and build path:

{
  "version": 4,
  "configurePresets": [
    {
      "name": "vs-dev",
      "displayName": "Visual Studio development",
      "inherits": "ninja_ccache",
      "generator": "Visual Studio 18 2026",
      "binaryDir": "C:/build"
    }
  ]
}

Then configure and build using your preset:

cmake --preset mydev
cmake --build ../build

If you use VSCode with the CMake Tools extension, select your preset via the command palette (CMake: Select Configure Preset) or set it in .vscode/settings.json:

{
  "cmake.configurePreset": "mydev"
}

After running cmake, you can always run make help to see a list of all possible make targets.

Note that CMake honors user umask for creating directories as of now. You should set the umask explicitly before running the install target.

CMake links:

The home page of the CMake project: https://cmake.org/

Official documentation: https://cmake.org/documentation/

About CMake in general and why KDE4 uses it: https://lwn.net/Articles/188693/

Useful variables: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/community/wikis/doc/cmake/Useful-Variables

Frequently Asked Questions: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/community/wikis/FAQ