LIBUDNS in src/CMakeLists.txt is pointing to libcares.a.
However, for some newer Debian release with libc-ares-dev 1.27.0-1.0ubuntu1, the correct file to link should be libcares_static.a.
I tested building the latest release on a Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS machine and got LIBUDNS missing error. After changing it to libcares_static.a, the build is successful.
I also tested building on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS with libc-ares-dev 1.18.1-1ubuntu0 and it turns out to be ok with the original libcares.a
I'm not sure how to generalize this to make it compatible with both older and newer system.