I want to install QGIS from source on Ubuntu 13.10. (saucy). into ~/bin. There is Python 2.7.5+ installed. Therefore, I cloned the repository to my machine and checked out the master branch. First I did what the QGIS documentation recommends:

1. $ export CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/bin
2. $ cd QGIS
3. $ mkdir build-master
4. $ cd build-master
5. $ ccmake ..

CMake stops with the following error message:

CMake Error: The following variables are used in this project, but they are set to NOTFOUND. Please set them or make sure they are set and tested correctly in the CMake files: PYTHON_LIBRARY
linked by target "qgispython" in directory /home/jjd/QGIS/src/python
linked by target "python_module_qgis_analysis" in directory /home/jjd/QGIS/python
linked by target "python_module_qgis_core" in directory /home/jjd/QGIS/python
linked by target "python_module_qgis_gui" in directory /home/jjd/QGIS/python
linked by target "python_module_qgis_networkanalysis" in directory /home/jjd/QGIS/python

Second try following the advise of Secagy ...

1. $ export CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/bin
2. $ cd QGIS
3. $ mkdir build-master
4. $ cd build-master
5. $ ccmake -DPYTHON_LIBRARY=/usr/bin/python2 ..

This time CMake stops with:

BINDINGS_GLOBAL_INSTALL: Install bindings to global python directory? (might need root)

Running the above command with sudo does not make a difference. In the following I tried various build flags inspired by different posts without success.

References:

• CMake error: PYTHON_LIBRARY-NOTFOUND while compiling QGIS [Solved]
• Building QGIS on Ubuntu 13.04

Solution

Actually, the message "BINDINGS_GLOBAL_INSTALL: Install bindings to global python directory? (might need root)" shown at the bottom is not an error but a help message. So after supplying the include and library paths I could continue by pressing g in the ccmake wizard to start the generate task.
Here are the steps (customize the paths for your system!):

1. $ cd QGIS
2. $ mkdir build-master
3. $ cd build-master
4. $ ccmake ..
5. In the wizard set CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to /home/user/bin/qgis. Make sure to append qgis here!
6. In the wizard set PYTHON_INCLUDE_PATH to /usr/include/python2.7. Should be already set.
7. In the wizard set PYTHON_LIBRARY to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpython2.7.so.
8. Press c
9. Press g
10. $ make -j2 The number should correspond to the number of processors in your machine.
11. $ make install
12. Add export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/bin/qgis/lib to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc and re-source the shell.
13. Start QGIS from ~/bin/qgis/bin/qgis.
14. You can also create a .desktop file as described here.