On Nov 25, 2015, at 9:30 PM, Richard Kinder <rkinder@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I’m looking at making a small tool to translate .pkt files (Wildpackets, specifically the wireless traces) to pcap/pcapng format on the command line, and it seems wiretap is one of the few options available online.
>
> Question: Can the library be built independently of Wireshark?
It can't be, and probably will never be able to be, built independently of the "Wireshark utilities" library, the source to which is in the wsutil directory.
It *might* be possible to extract both of those libraries, along with bits of the configuration/build mechanism, into a source tree that can build those two libraries, but I don't know whether anybody's actually succeeded in doing so.
And you might need to keep your own copy anyway, unless you contribute that tool to the Wireshark project for inclusion as part of Wireshark, unless you're willing to change your program as the API to libwiretap changes - it's not a stable API (there are a number of places where it really needs to change).
I'd suggest contributing it to Wireshark, at which point it becomes the job of the person who changes the libwiretap API, not your job, to change it as necessary to work with the changed API.