This is an example of how to build a Wireshark plugin out-of-tree. Tested on Linux using GCC 7. Note this builds against Wireshark's *installed* version. You should of course adapt to your own needs. To build/install the plugin: $ mkdir build && cd build $ cmake .. $ make $ sudo make install If your wireshark.pc file is not in one of the standard pkg-config search paths you will have to tell pkg-config where to find it. Arguably the easiest way to do so is setting PKG_CONFIG_PATH in your build environment, for example: $ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/lib64/pkgconfig"