While I do get why CMake is a scripted build system, I cannot help but notice that other languages don't need it.

In Rust, you have Cargo.toml, in go, it's a rather simple go.mod.

And even in embedded C, you have platformio which manages to make due with a few .ini files.

I would honestly love to see the cpp folks actually standardizing a proper build system and dependency manager.

Today, just building a simple QT app is usually a daunting task, and other compiled ecosystems show us it doesn't have to be.