It may be time to update Zawinski's Law to something like:
"Every tool expands until turning complete"
At the point where cmake is fungible with a programming language, why not just write the build system in the one you know?
As with the various markup languages that purport to "simplify" HTML, we're given enough PITA learning curve (how does this doo-hicky do anchor tags, since <a> is right out?) that just writing straight HTML would have sucked less.
/rant