I have this library(lxc) installed which has the .pc file in /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig I'm working on a modified version of CentOS. Apparantly, I'm having pkg-conf package (instead of pkg-config). When I try to install a package which has dependencies on this library, on running cmake .., I get the error Package 'lxc' required by 'virtual:world', not found /usr/share/cmake/Modules/FindPkgConfig.cmake:467(message): A required package was not found . Now when I do pkg-config --variable pc_path pkg-config it shows /usr/lin64/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig. So I need to add the /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig to the search path. However, this does not seem straightforward. The general recommended solution is to add this path using export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig. However, this does not work. I also tried adding a file local.conf in the folder /etc/ld.so.conf.d with the content as /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig but this doesn't help either. Searching the man page of pkg_conf here https://man.archlinux.org/man/pkgconf.1.en , I also tried doing export $CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig, which also doesn't help. I'm a bit out of ideas at this point and would be really grateful if someone could provide an insight.