the commands I use to setup the appleseed environment on Debian (made it it script mostly for the highlight), it's *different* from the instructions in the documentation

appleseed_env.sh

#!/usr/bin/bash
export APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES=/home/eleni/code/forks/appleseed/prebuilt-linux-deps
export CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include
export CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export LD_RUN_PATH=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib:$LD_RUN_PATH
export QT5_DIR=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5

mkdir -p $HOME/code/forks/appleseed/build
cd $HOME/code/forks/appleseed/build

git apply $APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/../../cmake_boost_version.patch

cmake \
  -Wno-dev \
  -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON \
  -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5 \
  -DWITH_EMBREE=ON \
  -DUSE_SSE42=ON \
  -DUSE_STATIC_BOOST=OFF \
  -DBoost_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include/boost_1_61_0 \
  -DBOOST_LIBRARYDIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/ \
  -DBoost_NO_SYSTEM_PATHS=ON \
  -DBoost_ATOMIC_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_atomic-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_CHRONO_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_chrono-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_DATE_TIME_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_date_time-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_FILESYSTEM_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_filesystem-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_PYTHON_LIBRARY=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_python-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_PYTHON_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_python-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_REGEX_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_regex-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_SYSTEM_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_system-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_THREAD_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_thread-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DBoost_WAVE_LIBRARY_RELEASE=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libboost_wave-gcc63-mt-1_61.so.1.61.0 \
  -DEMBREE_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include/embree3 \
  -DEMBREE_LIBRARY=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/libembree3.so \
  -DLZ4_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include \
  -DLZ4_LIBRARY=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/lib/liblz4.so \
  -DOPENIMAGEIO_OIIOTOOL=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/bin/oiiotool \
  -DOPENIMAGEIO_IDIFF=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/bin/idiff \
  -DOPENIMAGEIO_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include/OpenImageIO \
  -DOSL_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include/OSL \
  -DOSL_COMPILER=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/bin/oslc \
  -DOSL_MAKETX=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/bin/maketx \
  -DOSL_QUERY_INFO=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/bin/oslinfo \
  -DOPENCOLORIO_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include/OpenColorIO \
  -DPNG_PNG_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include/libpng16 \
  -DXERCES_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include/xercesc \
  -DIMATH_INCLUDE_DIR=$APPLESEED_DEPENDENCIES/include \
  ..