DESTDIR — CMake 4.2.6 Documentation

# DESTDIR

This is a CMake Environment Variable. Its initial value is taken from the calling process environment.

On UNIX one can use the `DESTDIR` mechanism in order to relocate the whole installation. `DESTDIR` means DESTination DIRectory. It is commonly used by packagers to install software in a staging directory.

For example, running

    make DESTDIR=/package/stage install

will install the software using the installation prefix, e.g. `/usr/local`, prepended with the `DESTDIR` value which gives `/package/stage/usr/local`. The packaging tool may then construct the package from the content of the `/package/stage` directory.

See the `CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX` variable to control the installation prefix when configuring a build tree. Or, when using the `cmake(1)` command-line tool's `--install` mode, one may specify a different prefix using the `--prefix` option.

Note

`DESTDIR` may not be used on Windows because installation prefix usually contains a drive letter like in `C:/Program Files` which cannot be prepended with some other prefix.