I hear you about debugging cmake (although in this specific case JetBrains has a CMake debugger: https://blog.jetbrains.com/clion/2022/10/clion-2022-3-eap-cmake

I hear you about debugging cmake (although in this specific case JetBrains has a CMake debugger: https://blog.jetbrains.com/clion/2022/10/clion-2022-3-eap-cmake-debugger/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/clion/2022/10/clion-2022-3-eap-cm... ) but one can also concede that the magnitude of code one even needs to consider are not in the same universe as each other: $ cd mozilla-central $ find python/mach python/mozbuild/mozbuild -name '*.py' -exec cat '{}' ';' | wc -l 83088 $ find keepassxc -name CMakeLists.txt -o -name '*.cmake' -type f -exec cat '{}' ';' | wc -l 866 I am on-board with something like Starlark, which is allowed to make reasonable build decisions with the information available to it, but is prevented from mutating my system. I try to be very disciplined about reading every .gradle file carefully, because jokers love to do whatever they want when they have a full-blown programming language available to them