That is a bad hack, do you know how modern cmake works?
include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare( cjson
GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/DaveGamble/cJSON.git
GIT_TAG "v1.7.18" GIT_SHALLOW TRUE )
SET(ENABLE_CJSON_TEST OFF CACHE BOOL "Enable cJSON tests")
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(cjson)
function(USE_CJSON target)
target_link_libraries(${target} PUBLIC cjson)
endfunction()