Cmake environmental variables: how to make find_package, find_path and find_library work

Environment Variables

These are environment variables which effect cmake behaviour.

CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH 

This is used when searching for include files e.g. using the FIND_PATH() command. If you have headers in non-standard locations, it may be useful to set this variable to this directory (e.g.  /sw/include on Mac OS X). If you need several directories, separate them by the platform specific separators (e.g. ":" on UNIX)

CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH 

This is used when searching for libraries e.g. using the FIND_LIBRARY() command. If you have libraries in non-standard locations, it may be useful to set this variable to this directory (e.g.  /sw/lib on Mac OS X). If you need several directories, separate them by the platform specific separators (e.g. ":" on UNIX)

CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH 

(since CMake  2.6.0) This is used when searching for include files, binaries, or libraries using either the FIND_PACKAGE(), FIND_PATH(), FIND_PROGRAM(), or FIND_LIBRARY() commands. For each path in the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH list, CMake will check "PATH/include" and "PATH" when FIND_PATH() is called, "PATH/bin" and "PATH" when FIND_PROGRAM() is called, and "PATH/lib" and "PATH" when FIND_LIBRARY() is called. See the documentation for FIND_PACKAGE(), FIND_LIBRARY(), FIND_PATH(), and FIND_PROGRAM() for more details.

CMAKE_INSTALL_ALWAYS 

If set during installation CMake will install all files whether they have changed or not. The default when this is not set is to install only files that have changed since the previous installation. In both cases all files are reported to indicate CMake knows they are up to date in the installed location.

$ENV{name} 

This is not an environment variable , but this is how you can access environment variables from cmake files. It returns the content of the environment variable with the given name (e.g.  $ENV{PROGRAMFILES})

DESTDIR 

If this environment variable is set it will be prefixed to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX in places where it is used to access files during installation. This allows the files to be installed in an intermediate directory tree without changing the final installation path name. Since the value of CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX may be included in installed files it is important to use DESTDIR rather than changing CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX when it is necessary to install to a intermediate staging directory.