# where can I find a comprehensive documentation for commands such as find\_package?

**URL:** <https://discourse.cmake.org/t/where-can-i-find-a-comprehensive-documentation-for-commands-such-as-find-package/592>\
**Category:** Code\
**Created:** [February 6, 2020, 3:21pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/where-can-i-find-a-comprehensive-documentation-for-commands-such-as-find-package/592 "2020-02-06T15:21:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tianfang\_Sun](https://discourse.cmake.org/user_avatar/discourse.cmake.org/tianfang_sun/32/346_2.png) [@Tianfang\_Sun](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/Tianfang_Sun)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 3:21pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/where-can-i-find-a-comprehensive-documentation-for-commands-such-as-find-package/592/1 "2020-02-06T15:21:58Z")

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Hi everyone. I’m just begin to get touch with the cmake and I’m wondering where can I find a complete document for the command. By complete I mean, for example, in the documentation for the find\_package [here](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/command/find_package.html), it is not talking about the command will set the \_LINK\_LIBRARIES or \_INCLUDE\_DIRS at all. Infact I cannot even find a document that point to these two variables. So how do people know we can use them rather than just google it after all?

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**Author:** ![fenrir](https://discourse.cmake.org/user_avatar/discourse.cmake.org/fenrir/32/734_2.png) [@fenrir](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/fenrir)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 3:57pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/where-can-i-find-a-comprehensive-documentation-for-commands-such-as-find-package/592/2 "2020-02-06T15:57:39Z")

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I guess this sentence explains it:

“When the package is found package-specific information is provided through variables and  
[  
Imported Targets](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-buildsystem.7.html#imported-targets) documented by the package itself.”

So exactly what imported targets and variables get set, is documented for each find module separately.

For example:

- [https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindZLIB.html](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindZLIB.html)

- [https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindCURL.html](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/module/FindCURL.html)

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**Author:** ![Tianfang\_Sun](https://discourse.cmake.org/user_avatar/discourse.cmake.org/tianfang_sun/32/346_2.png) [@Tianfang\_Sun](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/Tianfang_Sun)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2020, 4:15pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/where-can-i-find-a-comprehensive-documentation-for-commands-such-as-find-package/592/3 "2020-02-06T16:15:11Z")

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That really makes sense. Thanks Jakub. 😀