Why does vcpkg not copy debug dlls?

[tksharpless]

I build numerous programs using cmake scripts to generate MSVS projects. There are lots of opensource dependencies, and I use vcpkg to manage those. Recently I have started using a vcpkg manifest, and enjoying the nice feature that copies the required dlls into the build directories. But that is only working for release and relwithdebinfo builds, not for debug builds.

Several people have reported this problem since 2021. It has been declared resolved a couple of times, but clearly is not. None of the advice I have been able to find fixes it.

The manifest and its vcpkg-installed folder are in a common build directory, separate from my source directories. vcpkg itself is installed in another directory. I have enabled vcpkg manifests in my VS projects, and my build scripts include the following line:
set(CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE "D:/opensource/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake" CACHE FILEPATH "Vcpkg integration")
Everything except copying debug dlls seems to work as described in the vcpkg docs.

[tksharpless]

UPDATE I rewrote my base cmakelist.txt to work more natively with vcpkg. That did make finding packages simpler and more automatic, but had an unexpected side effect: the builds no longer copy dlls for any configuration, whether or not I enable vckpg_manifest in the vcproj.

The main change was to add
list(APPEND CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH ${VCPKG_ROOT}/packages)
and remove several explicit commands locating pkgs that don't support find_package().

[dg0yt]

packages is an internal staging area during build. It is not used for installations from artifact cache.

[tksharpless]

Thanks, dg0yt. Can you tell me what is the right way to tell Cmake where to find packages not visible to find-package()?

[Osyotr]

If you can't change portfile, write cmake find module.
Something like this: https://gist.github.com/Osyotr/709e71a91a3b277b01b684a0d638e758

[dg0yt]

Can you tell me what is the right way to tell Cmake where to find packages not visible to find-package()?

I might be able to do that, but...

• The description is too abstract to see potential insufficencies in the setup.
• You also didn't name the actual past issues you refer to, so this vague as well.

In that situation, I would need to guess.