10 engineers on Hacker News describe using CMake first-hand: 2 endorse it, 6 regret it, 0 are mixed.
“we switched from CMake to a handrolled typescript build system and it made our builds faster and simpler.”
regret · production · Jarred · 2026-07-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I always found recompiling for new devices to be one of the most painful things about working in C++ (for example, the often necessary nightmare of cmake).”
regret · production · hogepodge · 2025-06-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Cargo is much easier to use than cmake, make, and other custom build scripts we were using before.”
regret · production · thesuperbigfrog · 2024-12-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Does it scale for large monorepos? That's where CMake hits its limits.”
regret · production · padde · 2024-05-05 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Whenever cmake is used, building a new version is always an adventure with unpredictable outcome.”
regret · personal · adrian_b · 2023-12-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“CMake's language is unintuitive and clunky.”
regret · production · umvi · 2020-09-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Cmake is a breeze by comparison.”
endorse · personal · agentultra · 2013-12-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use cmake to build our software and libraries and I agree with he author, it's much more viable than autotools”
endorse · production · shin_lao · 2011-11-03 · source ↗ · wrong label?“The rest of the company used a number of either custom tools or cmake or premske.”
neutral · production · bobdobbs666 · 2019-12-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?