> I don't quite get what you mean. [...] What I'm saying is that there is a super-easy way to configure CMake to enable optimisations (CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release)

> I don't quite get what you mean. [...] What I'm saying is that there is a super-easy way to configure CMake to enable optimisations (CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release), but this cannot be said for bounds checking Maybe I'm not getting what you mean. You are saying you already run cmake ... So I am saying you can just change that to CXXFLAGS="-Dblah" cmake -U CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS ... That genuinely seems pretty darn easy to me. In any case, any beef you have is clearly with CMake here. You'd have the same issue(s) with any other flag, for any language, if you use CMake.