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by zyntraxis 407 days ago
You're absolutely right — Conan with a conanfile.txt and minimal CMake can be very concise. And for people already familiar with CMake/Conan, that setup works well.

But here's the key difference:

> In your CMakeLists.txt, when you write find_package(somelib), that only works if the library is already installed and registered properly in the CMake package registry or via a Conan toolchain. Otherwise, you still have to configure remotes, run conan install, deal with CMake toolchain files, set CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH, etc.

With Zyn, there's no need to install or configure anything manually

Zyn:

Clones the repo

Builds it

Links it to your project

Works cross-platform, without needing the library to be "findable" in the system or Conan cache.

So in short: Zyn handles the fetch/build/link pipeline completely, using just the GitHub URL. No find_package, no system-wide installs, no registry or remotes — which makes it extremely easy for quick experiments, hobby projects, or internal tools.

We're not saying Conan is bad — it's powerful, and necessary for big projects. But Zyn aims to remove all friction for the common case.