Python doesn't seem like a huge barrier to entry to me. CMake might be great in many ways, but the syntax is truly awful. It's just not intuitive to many people

Python doesn't seem like a huge barrier to entry to me. CMake might be great in many ways, but the syntax is truly awful. It's just not intuitive to many people. I think due to how spacing works in CMake you can have incorrect things run and not fail. That's a huge issue, especially when onboarding people who aren't familiar with CMake. Meson has some warts, especially around documentation but it's just easier and is just generally predictable. I've converted some CMake projects internally to meson and people were able to contribute and make changes with minimal learning and training, because the structure is intuitive. That means a lot.