To make a long story short: To add insult to injury, CMake actually ran fine several times. I was wrestling with a compiler error when CMake suddenly didn't feel like working anymore. For reference, here's the whole CMakeLists.txt file: set(CMAKE_INCLUDE_CURRENT_DIR ON) Find_Package ( SDL REQUIRED ) Find_Package ( SDL_image REQUIRED ) Find_Package ( SDL_mixer REQUIRED ) if ( NOT SDL_FOUND ) message ( FATAL_ERROR "Make sure that SDL is installed" ) endif ( NOT SDL_FOUND ) link_libraries ( ${SDL_LIBRARY} ${SDLIMAGE_LIBRARY} ${SDLMIXER_LIBRARY} SDLmain ) set(wiggle_SOURCES level.cpp levelgenerator.cpp main.cpp player.cpp scoreboard.cpp snake.cpp soundplayer.cpp titlescreen.cpp ) add_executable(Wiggle ../${wiggle_SOURCES}) The error occured for the first time when, instead of simply typing "make", I typed "make -lSDL -lSDL_image -lSDL_mixer" - make refused to find the header files SDL.h and SDL_image.h after I detached the project from Code::Blocks.