Looks like OpenCV is using CMake: http://www.cmake.org/ http://www.cmake.org/ Here's my setup: Vagrant http://www.vagrantup.com/ http://www.vagrantup.com/ Clan

Looks like OpenCV is using CMake: http://www.cmake.org/ http://www.cmake.org/ Here's my setup: Vagrant http://www.vagrantup.com/ http://www.vagrantup.com/ Clang http://clang.llvm.org/ http://clang.llvm.org/ Chef cookbooks for dependencies (like Clang) Vagrant makes standing up a development virtual machine easy and repeatable. I prefer clang to gcc primarily for the (IMO) superior error messages. But, the "YouCompleteMe" plugin for Vim is a very nice additional benefit to using clang. I would also recommend reading up on some of the changes to the language made in C++11 - the support for lambdas, for example, is wonderful. Finally, with the latest version of Vagrant there is support for Docker containers, https://www.docker.io/ https://www.docker.io/ This holds a lot of promise. I'd recommend looking at that, too, as a way to build the development environment and required libraries once, in addition to using Chef for provisioning... think of docker as a shortcut to provisioning that can also be used in deployment...