Do we really need to wrap more crap around cmake? It's already wrapping make in an unknowable way, and this layer doesn't help. The challenges when using these things aren't in writing the thing, it's fixing it when it doesn't work, understanding the error messages, etc, etc. Each layer of crap is a huge step backwards. What would you say to the cowboy that will wrap cmkr in another layer of indirection?

Yo dawg, I heard you like generating build scripts, so we put a generator in your generator so you can generate while you generate.

I think Cmkr fails to state its value proposition by focusing on how it works.

Any system like CMake that wraps boatloads of complexity is going to have unexpected interactions and inscrutable failures.

The question for any developer who doesn't want to become a build system guru is whether they can take a happy path far from any gotcha's.

That's when people start defining conventions to solve classes of problems: follow this template to do X, and you'll be fine.

The value of Cmkr lies in being about to define those conventions and happy paths. I should be able to inspect their templates, and if one fits, I'm good to go.

Even nicer would the ability to retrofit my build to a known-working template.

But Cmkr only presents the "beginners" template repo as an aside, and says nothing about whether these templates are tested for various projects on various systems.

By not explicitly identifying the problem it's trying to solve, Cmkr seems to have bumped up against a solution accidentally, and doesn't give me confidence. I believe that could be easily remedied.

A build generator for a build generator? Oh boy. This is starting to feel like the JavaScript ecosystem.

I think this is being misunderstood, partially because of the self-claim that this is a build system.

The CMake DSL is utter garbage. From my understanding, this converts TOML that follows the same/similar naming as CMake commands/options to CMake DSL. Allowing for total compatibility with CMake while avoiding the pain of actually interacting directly with a CMakeLists.txt.

Most people agree that CMake is not a good option but the only real option. I'd happily put lipstick on this pig.