[tempest_]

> A lot of the tooling reminds me of NPM, and after spending a huge amount of my time fighting with NPM, I actually prefer the way C/C++/CMake handles stuff.

I guess you and me live different lives because I have spent far more time messing with ancient C/C++/CMake/Automake/Autoconf/configure/just have this particular .so file in this particular spot/copy some guys entire machine because this project only builds there/learn and entirely different language just to write build files (CMake sucks and 5 other alternatives are just lipstick on a pig) etc. etc.

I am of the opinion that half of Rusts success is based on that fact that C/C++'s tooling is annoying and ancient. People want to write code not mess with build envs.

[FieryMechanic]

The issue you are describing isn't an problem with C/C++ tooling. It is to do with how the developer dealt with dependencies i.e. poorly. BTW this happens in any language if they do that. I've had to deal with some awful C# code bases that would only compile on one guys machine.

I am a hobbyist C/C++ developer and have a intermediate size code base that builds on Linux, Windows (MinGW and MSVC) and MacOS and I didn't do anything particularly special. What I did do is setup CI early on in my project. So I had to fix any issues as I went along.