> I don't think that I have ever been able to successfully compile a project that uses CMake.
That's quite the statement. In practice, I've found cmake -h. -Bbuild && cmake --build build
to work about 90% of the time. Far more luck than I've had with autotools.
> Its code is horrifying too, for example:
1) I'm sure I could find some horriffic code in meson too if I went digging. 2) The alternative to this is you having to write something equivalent in your own code, meaning that in my code I don't need to do stuff like [0] in my code to detect features; my build system handles it for me. 3) CMake supports more platforms and targets than I've ever seen in my life, and likely supports more compilers than are necessary. that's a blessing and a curse, but it means that if I write simple program to run on some crufty microcontroller with a bastardised gcc toolchain from the 90s, it's fairly likely that cmake supports it out of the box. Code like that is the price to pay for that level of support.
[0] https://github.com/boostorg/beast/blob/b7344b0d501f23f763a76...
