Meson is excellent and would have eaten CMake out of house and home if it weren’t for the stupidity of it targeting C/C++ but being written in Python. A lot of C/C++ developers cringe at the thought of requiring Python as a build dependency.
Maven, Ant, implemented in Java
Sbt, implemented in Scala
Leinigen, implemented in Clojure
MSBuild, implemented in a mix of C++ and C#
Gems, implemented in Ruby
eggs, implemented in Python
cargo, implemented in Rust
Why should it be any different for C and C++?
So vcpkg it is.
(I’m not sure why I decided to share this right now. Sorry.)
That said one thing I like about autotools is how it generates a build system that doesn't depend on more than shell script and make, and can be packaged that way. It's annoying that CMake produces a build system that requires CMake to be present to build.