[Rochus]

CMake - as autotools - is a meta build system; it e.g. generates make files, which are essentially scripts. Also CMake itself is essentially a VM with a scripting language. Both CMake and Make are Turing complete (and dynamically typed, as mentioned). And yes, not all build systems are the same; e.g. https://github.com/rochus-keller/BUSY has a statically typed specification language and intentionally avoids a Turing complete language.

[felipec]

The Makefiles CMake generates are not distributed in the tarball. So no, we are not talking about apples to apples.

[hulitu]

The OP was talking about complexity:

> These tools are generally much too complex. I don't think that e.g. CMake builds are easier to understand and analyze

From my experience (as a non programmer) CMake is much hearder to debug than autotools.