I don't think these two statements are fully compatible:

> Do any of the following apply to you?

> - You want to avoid hard-coding paths

> ...

> If so, you’ll benefit from a CMake-like build system.

and

> Don’t GLOB files

I find it very annoying that I, a human, am expected to keep a current list of all source code files, when listing files is something that computers are very good at. They even tell us how to structure the project with a src folder, but I still have to remember to add or remove source code files to the right CMakeLists.txt when the content of that folder changes. It's poor design.

CMake gets a lot of hate because a lot of large projects use it poorly and the syntax is strange, but I've found it invaluable for projects I've worked on. The first page of this site has a great list of reasons why someone would want to use CMake. I would recommend at least reading that far rather than reading "CMake" in the title and reflexively commenting something negative. I skimmed through and this seems like a nice resource to get people spun up on CMake, I'll recommend it to new users in the future.

Even latest CMake version still has that terrible syntax. If they want to survive the competition, at some point they need to provide (an option at least) another, proper syntax.

Modern CMake is Bazel or Gradle.

takes cover

Related. Others?

An Introduction to Modern CMake - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39784784 - March 2024 (28 comments)

An Introduction to Modern CMake - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22577889 - March 2020 (41 comments)

An Introduction to Modern CMake - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17897685 - Sept 2018 (122 comments)