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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what you mean. If for whatever reason I need to set up a big C/C++ application so that it can compile on diverse systems, CMake is one of my best bets for getting that to happen. If anyone would like to suggest a better option I would gladly switch, but as it stands I think CMake is pretty useful to know about.

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I'm not arguing that it doesn't do what it was designed to do. I'm arguing that it is a grotesque DSL with bizarre design choices. CMake would have been better off as a cross-platform library that didn't re-invent concepts that other programming languages have already gotten correct, and instead focused on making the build system be cross-platform.

I’ve mentioned the same thing before and ironically, CMake was developed in the course of building medical imaging software[0] that was using Tcl, a flexible, embeddable language, but then decided to roll their own ad hoc language in this case. They left a LOT on the table with that decision, I think.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTK

I think the op's point is that it was not necessary to invent a new programming language for this. You could write a library for existing languages (probably with a custom entry point) that does the same thing, but without a new and confusing syntax.

Bazel works very well for C++ applicatios. Cross platform builds are well supported.

bazel can’t even build static libraries

https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/1920

False. The bug above represents a nuanced case.

Meson?

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