Of course once the makefile is generated, there is no need to use cmake (as long as the project is not modified), but you cannot share a makefile generated by

Of course once the makefile is generated, there is no need to use cmake (as long as the project is not modified), but you cannot share a makefile generated by cmake, not even redistribute it. You cannot even re/locate it on your hard drive. The difference is that autotools generates source distributions that do not need autotools to build, while a cmake project always requires cmake when building.