Why does tcpdump not come precompiled and how to compile it?

Question

Hello I recently downloaded tcpdump from the www.tcpdump.org/ website, extracted the tar.gz file and found nothing but source and header files, I do not posses the necessary knowledge to get a working .exe if someone could assist me with the task I would appreciate it.

Answer 1

tcpdump is a tool for Unix / linux based systems for capturing traffic at the packet level. It comes as a source package, as it is an open source package aimed at

1. End users that wish to compile themselves
2. Linux / Unix distribution providers that will package the app in a way suitable for installation (in which case an end user would simple install it using a package manager)

While there are Windows versions of tcpdump available, the underlying capture method works differently to *nix systems.

You would be better off choosing a tool built for Windows, such as Wireshark (gui based capture tool) or windump, which is a command line tool that syntactically operates in the same way as tcpdump. Both are based on the WinPcap library for packet capture.