[CMake] is ccmake reliable?

[James C. Sutherland]

On another mailing list that I subscribe to someone mentioned that  
ccmake was not very reliable.  Is this true?

A related question:  If I set CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX in my  
CMakeLists.txt file
> set( CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
>   ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}
>   )
and then run ccmake, I find that the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX variable is  
set to /usr/local rather than the binary directory.  Is this a bug?  I  
ran ccmake on a clean build directory, i.e. I had no cache.   
Incidentally, this also occurs with the CMake gui.  If I dump the  
variable from my CMakeLists.txt file, e.g.
>   message( STATUS "Files will be installed to: " $ 
> {CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX} )

then it reflects the correct directory, but the CMakeCache.txt file  
still shows /usr/local.  Am I misunderstanding something?

Thanks,

James