IMHO make is not a great target for code generation. I.e. cmake should probably compile to something like ninja (the way meson does, actually I haven't checked

IMHO make is not a great target for code generation. I.e. cmake should probably compile to something like ninja (the way meson does, actually I haven't checked if cmake could potentially compile to ninja). Cmake is a weird tool, it's kind of ok, one can see why it was built, but it is astonishing how little benefit it provides over autoconf+automake as a makefile generator. The thing about pure Makefiles is: they don't scale well. They usually start simple, and with project-growth the accumulate parameters, features and tasks, until they become an unbearable maintenance burden. I remember working on a project where I deleted a Makefile, and rewrote it from scratch, just because it contained the tinkering of about 10 devs, most of which were not actively developing the project anymore. In the end it was a magnitude smaller and faster. But: I am pretty sure it has either grown massively again over time, or it has fallen out of use.