I tried learning CMake and it seemed so simple at first compared to, say, autotools, or even writing one’s own Makefile. Then when you want to do anything other than a simple project, it gets crazy. It’s like it was initially just an informational file format that had scripting bolted on in a haphazard manner so as not to break anything.

Doesn’t CMake not even have a concept of arrays? I remember reading that functions to generate arrays were really just fancy string concatenaters with quote escaping.