https://github.com/randerson112/craft/blob/main/CMakeLists.t...

...and for custom requirements a manually created CMakeLists.extras.txt as escape hatch.

Unclear to me how more interesting scenarios like compiler- and platform-specific build options (enable/disable warnings, defines, etc...), cross-compilation via cmake toolchain files (e.g. via Emscripten SDK, WASI SDK or Android SDK/NDK) would be handled. E.g. just trivial things like "when compiling for Emscripten, include these source files, but not those others".

Just alone reverse engineering the Xcode and Visual Studio project file formats for each IDE version isn't fun, but this "boring" grunt work is what makes cmake so valuable.

The core ideas of cmake are sound, it's only the scripting language that sucks.

Build systems don't plan to converge in the future =)

    curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

I wish there was a dead simple installer TUI that had a common API specification so that you could host your installer spec on your.domain.com/install.json - point this TUI at it and it would understand the fine grained permissions required, handle required binary signature validation, manifest/sbom validation, give the user freedom to customize where/how things were installed, etc.

Cmake has a lot of warts, but they have also put a lot of effort into finding and fixing all those weird special cases. If your project uses CMake odds are high it will build anywhere.

You need to define a CMake toolchain[1] and pass it to CMake with --toolchain /path/to/file in the command-line, or in a preset file with the key `toolchainFile` in a CMake preset. I've compiled for QNX and ARM32 boards with CMake, no issues, but this needs to be done.

[1]: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-toolchains....

If you're happy to bake one config in a makefile, then cmake will do very little for you.

I have this solved at our company. We have a tool built on top of vcpkg, to manage internal + external dependencies. Our cmake linker logic leverages the port names and so all you really do is declare your manifest file (vcpkg.json) then declare which one of them you will export publicly.

Everything after that is automatic including the exported cmake config for your library.

  - Problem exists
  - Proposals of solutions, (varying quality), or not
  - "You can't just solve this. It's complicated! This problem must exist". (The post I'm replying to
  - Problem gets solved, hopefully.

The world is rich in complexity, subtlety, and exceptions to categorization. I don't think this should block us from solving problems.

* Standards committee is allergic to standardizing anything outside of the language itself: build tools, dependency management, even the concept of a "file" is controversial!

* Existing poor state of build systems is viral - any new build system is 10x as complex as a clean room design because you have to deal with all the legacy "power" of previous build tooling. Build system flaws propagate - the moment you need hacks in your build, you start imposing those hacks on downstream users of your library also.

Even CMake should be a much better experience than it is - but in the real world major projects don't maintain their CMake builds to the point you can cleanly depend on them. Things like using raw MY_LIB_DIR variables instead of targets, hacky/broken feature detection flags etc. Microsoft tried to solve this problem via vcpkg, ended up having to patch builds of 90% of the packages to get it to work, and it's still a poor experience where half the builds are broken.

My opinion is that a new C/C++ build/package system is actually a solvable problem now with AI. Because you can point Opus 4.6 or whoever at the massive pile of open source dependencies, and tell it for each one "write a build config for this package using my new build system" which solves the gordian knot of the ecosystem problem.

The problem is one of Tooling & Methodology. Not just tooling.

There is no divide between tools/methods - although there is often a massive conflict over methods, and thus tools, implying a relationship - but in fact both tooling and methodology need to be aligned or else poor tools are created.

There is much discussion about ‘the build problem’, but it is just as much an issue of solving ‘the method problem’.

For example, a vast majority of the problems of building software can be solved by using Docker (a method), or indeed adding new methods for various situations - i.e. embedded: compiler-onboard vs. cross-compiling, games: —march, etc.

I think the “I and Your” part of your position is ineffective - better to think of it as ‘a tool I/others want to use’ and ‘a method I/others agree to use’, where: tools and methods are aligned in equilibrium for the duration of the project (in an ideal case).

It’s ineffective because of the difference in effect between ‘want’ and ‘agree’ on that equilibrium.

Some methods, a person may not necessarily want to use - but agree to do so, because there is a local tool to assist with the method. Some tools, people will violently refuse to use because they despise the implied method and will never agree to it; sometimes, people get fired for not aligning methodology - but also often for writing a tool nobody (or hardly ever anybody) ever uses/can use/wants to use. (There’s a whole world of software that only one guy knows how to wrangle because they ‘built a better build system’…)

Apropos the “Yet Another C/C++ Configuration/Combobulator” problem, I tend to think the ‘problem with build systems’ is due to the avid desire to just build a new tool to force a new method rather than adopting an existing method and thus using existing tools, and, therefore in my opinion, the fewer new tools in this department, the better… but that’s just me, I’ve been wrangling C/C++ codebases since they were new languages, and I’ve seen some shit, kids ..

The solution is _always_ to align your methods with your fellow user-developers first and then work together on the tooling, old or new… because all software is social, and has a social responsibility to the user, and user-developer tools built to construct software socially, even more so.

And yet it will insist on only giving you binaries that match exactly. Thankfully there are experimental extensions that allow it to automatically fall back.

As an example of what I mean, say I want to link to the FMOD library (or any library I legally can't redistribute as an SDK). Or I want to enable automatic detection on Windows where I know the library/SDK is an installer package. My solution, in CMake, is to just ask the registry. In XMake I still can't figure out how to pull this off. I know that's pretty niche, but still.

The documentation gap is the biggest hurtle. A lot of the functions/ways of doing things are poorly documented, if they are at all. Including a CMake library that isn't in any of the package managers for example. It also has some weird quirks: automatic/magic scoping (which is NOT a bonus) along with a hack "import" function instead of using native require.

All of this said, it does work well when it does work. Especially with modules.

e.g. from their docs:

  project('sdldemo', 'c',
          default_options: 'default_library=static')
  
  sdl2_dep = dependency('sdl2')
  sdl2_main_dep = dependency('sdl2main')
  
  executable('sdlprog', 'sdlprog.c',
             win_subsystem: 'windows',
             dependencies: [sdl2_dep, sdl2_main_dep])

15000 what?

Gentoo user: hold my beer.

Perhaps you can see how there are some assumptions baked into that statement.

I have an even stronger sentiment regarding cross compilation though - In any build system, I think the distinction between “cross” and “non-cross” compilation is an anti-pattern.

Always design build systems assuming cross compilation. It hurts nothing if it just so happens that your host and target platform/architecture end up being the same, and saves you everything down the line if you need to also build binaries for something else.

Also the problem isn't creating a cargo like tool for C and C++, that is the easy part, the problem is getting more userbase than vcpkg or conan for it to matter for those communities.

- skipping cmake completely? would this be feasible?

- integration of other languages in the project?

- how to handle qt?

Is it though?

When I read the tutorial: https://docs.conan.io/2/tutorial/consuming_packages/build_si...

It says to hand write a `CMakeLists.txt` file. This is before it has me create a `conanfile.txt` even.

I have the same complaint about vcpkg.

It seems like it takes: `(conan | vcpkg) + (cmake | autotools) + (ninja | make)` to do the basics what cargo does.

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.