Cannot find ZLIB library after qmake2cmake conversion

[HarryGoddardTech]

I am working on a large C++ codebase that uses VS2022 and Qt 6.8.1. I am not using Qt Creator but working from the command line as I'm developing CI/CD processes. The system platform is Windows.

I can build the project from the existing .pro files using Qmake. After a successful conversion from Qmake to CMake, my build is failing looking for "Qt6BundledZLIBConfig.cmake". My assumption is the CMake conversion has created a new requirement (zlib) that wasn't previously there.

I have a zlib.lib and zlib.h files installed but the CMake build system seems insistent on re-building these and complains about the missing .cmake file. I have tried setting the ZLIB_LIBRARY and ZLIB_INCLUDE_DIR to point to the existing zlib files in my cmake call to no avail. I have also set my QT6_DIR to the Qt6 installation path (which was installed using aqt install-qt).