> There's no /usr/lib and /usr/include analogue
I would argue that it is a good thing to not rely on /usr/lib or /usr/include even on Unix. It is a pain for when a dev who is jumping on the team specially when the dependencies are not documented. The make-dependency error-install-make cycle is very annoying.
I usually try hard to not link against 'installed' libs but instead directly compile external dependencies from source as part of my project. That way I don't need to have different libs for different build configs or VStudio versions. CMake can import sources from locations outside your source tree, and these source locations can be relative to your project (e.g. on the same directory level). That way you don't need any global system settings, or centralized locations, everything can be relative to your project. I actually prefer this also on OSX or Linux.
In my case I needed libapr, and as far as I can tell there is no installer for it, so I wound up just saying "drop a compiled copy of libapr into this location in the source tree" into the build instructions since I did not want to redistribute it with my source.
So yes, I dearly wish for something like a working pkgconfig on Windows.