# Configuring with external dependencies

**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/configuring-with-external-dependencies/4887
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [December 24, 2020, 4:14am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/configuring-with-external-dependencies/4887 "2020-12-24T04:14:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![aisha](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/d26b3c/32.png) [@aisha](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/aisha)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2020, 4:14am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/configuring-with-external-dependencies/4887/1 "2020-12-24T04:14:45Z")

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I’m trying to upgrade the Gentoo Linux VTK package and am currently unable to see how to make VTK use external libraries instead of internal ones, like say for loguru and utf8cpp.

Could anyone point out what options I need to pass to configure to make sure that cmake finds the system wide installed packages?

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### Author: ![seanm](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@seanm](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/seanm)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2020, 4:56am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/configuring-with-external-dependencies/4887/2 "2020-12-24T04:56:24Z")

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Look for options in cmake with names like: VTK\_MODULE\_USE\_EXTERNAL\_ZLIB