The find package set of functions can find metadata and it is a correct way to do it. Same for Meson and pkg config. If you have to do transitive dependency han

The find package set of functions can find metadata and it is a correct way to do it. Same for Meson and pkg config. If you have to do transitive dependency handling by hand, believe me it is nearly impossible without these tools. There is a lot of CMake hacky code around, but there is also a proper way to do it that works :) Also, in Meson at least, it is easy to change to compile dependencies from system to subpprojects without touching the build files or even choose selectively which dependencies to use. And it works well transitively. You can argue that CMake is complex, but the truth is that it adds value. I say this from a real hate to CMake. But it works. As for SDL2, as an example, only in Windows you can have it compiled for different runtimes (debug release) in different modes ( static, dynamic), multithreaded and later you have to choose whether to compile SDL statically or dynamically. Now repeat configs for Linux/Mac/clang/gcc. I have done this before. No, it will not scale. If it is for personal stuff u do not need to release u can do something hardcoded by hand. Otherwise you will be wasting a non-trivial amount of time doing it, wsy more than without a proper build system, no matter how much you hate them...