snappy provides CMake targets: find_package(Snappy CONFIG REQUIRED) target_link_libraries(main PRIVATE Snappy::snappy) Optimizations based on hardware support are disabled by default. You can enable them by adding corresponding flags to VCPKG_CMAKE_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS inside a custom triplet file, for example: if("${PORT}" STREQUAL "snappy") list(APPEND VCPKG_CMAKE_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS -DSNAPPY_HAVE_SSSE3=ON -DSNAPPY_HAVE_BMI2=ON) endif() For a full list of possible options, see project's root CMakeLists.txt.