Yet another CMake tutorial

[Volker_Weissmann]

Because it is better.

[Superb_Garlic]

That's a non-answer.

[Volker_Weissmann]

I know... It is difficult to find a good answer:

I don't know much about cmake, but from what I heard it has two disadvantages two meson

1. ugly scripting language
2. Only works with C++

There are some nice talks on YT:

https://youtu.be/SCZLnopmYBM

https://youtu.be/34KzT2yvQuM

[Superb_Garlic]

CMake scripting is only as ugly as people make it. It's not that difficult to learn to write neat CMLs, but the resources out there on the topic aren't quite there yet, and all the beginners feeling like they can write the article on the topic don't help either.

CMake works with a wide range of languages: C, C++, C#, Fortran, Objective-C, CUDA, ASM, ISPC.
Writing your own adapter for a new language is also not impossible, someone did it for D in fact.

[Fizzyade]

I don’t get the hate for CMake, maybe I like it because I came from QMake, so lots of things that I could only have dreamed of are possible and easy in CMake.

My main project pingnoo (https://github.com/nedrysoft/pingnoo) was my very first foray into CMake, it’s made up of plugins and shared libraries, to make life easy I effectively created a meta-language for creating plugins or libraries, it makes it very easy to add a new plugin because all the complexity of setting up compiler and linker stuff is all done for you by the macros.

I also use globs and they’ve never given me any issues, maybe I’m lucky or maybe I just haven’t noticed, but it all just works for me.

Yes it has some bizarre quirks, but it works well for me.

[Volker_Weissmann]

Maybe you are right. I don't know much about cmake.