I think this is an incredibly kind take for CMake... what about projects that automatically generate bindings (like swig), or attempt to find system-installed h

I think this is an incredibly kind take for CMake... what about projects that automatically generate bindings (like swig), or attempt to find system-installed header files (like CUDA)? Look at, for example, pytorch (huge amounts of autogenerated code via ATen, at least a few years ago). In my experience C++ projects rarely live in a vacuum and projects build up cruft very easily.