I will never touch CMake again for my own projects. Ever. Xmake is extremely easy to use (while still being powerful) and really just works.
The only real downside I've encountered is that it if you want to do something very specific, it can be frustrating to find out how. The documentation can be somewhat unclear or lacking at times (I don't blame the author, their native language isn't English), and there is so little content out there that Google always corrects "xmake" to "cmake" in your searches.
> I will never touch CMake again for my own projects. Ever. Xmake is extremely easy to use (while still being powerful) and really just works.
That's quite the odd statement. CMake is extremely easy to use, just works, and handles everything at all that everyone needs, from building cross-platform projects comprised of multiple programming languages, tests, dependencies, and even packaging.
In your opinion, what makes xmake worth the trouble?
Let's even put up a concrete example. Say I have a cmake project. It handles dependencies with a mix of ExternalProject_Add(), Conan, and even a stashed folder of vended third-party binaries. Also, it handles tests, and packaging, and it runs in a CICD pipeline that does it all on a couple of target platforms. Why would anyone switch that project to xmake?
> One of my favorite features particular to C++ is that you can configure dependencies to use local libraries, vcpkg, or Conan specifically.
This was the only substantiated claim you made in your whole post, but it refers to stuff that most standard build systems already do, specially cmake.
In fact, it's even trivial to hack together a plain old Makefile to add a target that invokes vcpkg or conan to fill in dependencies.
What exactly do you believe makes xmake worth the trouble?
The only real downside I've encountered is that it if you want to do something very specific, it can be frustrating to find out how. The documentation can be somewhat unclear or lacking at times (I don't blame the author, their native language isn't English), and there is so little content out there that Google always corrects "xmake" to "cmake" in your searches.