[seniorThrowaway]

Having to work around a massive C++ software project daily, I wish you luck. We use conan2, and while it can be very challenging to use, I've yet to find something better that can handle incorporating as dependencies ancient projects that still use autoconf or even custom build tooling. It's also very good at detecting and enforcing ABI compatibility, although there are still some gaps. This problem space is incredibly hard and improving it is a prime driver for the creation of many of the languages that came after C/C++

[mgaunard]

I find that conan2 is mostly painful with ABI. Binaries from GCC are all backwards compatible, as are C++ standard versions. The exception is the C++11 ABI break.

And yet it will insist on only giving you binaries that match exactly. Thankfully there are experimental extensions that allow it to automatically fall back.