# How to specify build directory

**URL:** https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-to-specify-build-directory/3562
**Category:** Usage
**Created:** [June 13, 2021, 2:47pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-to-specify-build-directory/3562 "2021-06-13T14:47:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![sayandip18](https://discourse.cmake.org/user_avatar/discourse.cmake.org/sayandip18/32/1557_2.png) [@sayandip18](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/sayandip18)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2021, 2:47pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-to-specify-build-directory/3562/1 "2021-06-13T14:47:16Z")

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My project looks something like this

```auto
- src
    - hello
        - hello.py
        - init.py    
- pyproject.toml
- setup.py
- CMakeLists.txt
- build

```

When I run `pip install .`, is there any way to specify that I want the build files to be located in the `build` directory?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![scivision](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@scivision](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/scivision)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2021, 1:09am UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-to-specify-build-directory/3562/2 "2021-06-14T01:09:01Z")

</div>

I would consider scikit-build. Otherwise, setup.py could use python \>= 3.8 importlib.resources.path and similar with subprocess.run