Do I need to install Unreal from Source to Build C++ Plugins?

I just wan’t to verify, the doc’s says “When you install Unreal Engine from the Epic Launcher, or if you clone it from GitHub, the Unreal Engine pre-requisite installer runs automatically”. So that does mean, that I don’t need to install from source in order to be able to build C++ Plugin’s for Unreal?

I wanted to build a Plugin that lives in github and a colleague told me that I would need to install Unreal from source so I can build that. That plugin uses btw Boost as a dependency.

Thanks

Your colleague is incorrect. What you have is a read-only copy of the engine source so you can look at it, but you can’t change or build it. But you don’t need to change the engine source in order to build a plugin.

I’m not sure if you’ll be able to distribute a plugin that uses boost. What were you going to use boost for?

Actually I was following the Point-Cloud-Library Tutorial from this page Unreal Engine: Including a Third-Party Library (on the example of the Point Cloud Library and Boost) [Tutorial] [Download] – Valentin Kraft's Portfolio, before getting my Hands dirty I wanted to try out a plugin that is provable compilable. In his description he is shipping the needed libraries with the plugin, that should work I guess.
Thanks for the fast answer.