Question

I see cmake used in a lot of open source projects that i would enjoy working with, but i have no knowledge of cmake currently. Most applications i write now are small programs i write to refresh my knowledge, would using cmake to build these be a ‘waste of time’ because of their small size?

Answer 1

Are you currently writing makefile by hands ? If yes you might want to switch to CMake.

Look at a HelloWorld in CMake:

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
  printf("hello world.\n");
  return 0;
}

CMakeLists.txt

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.0)
project(MyProject)
add_executable(hello main.cpp)

Quite simple as you can see.

CMake is immensely powerful, it can generate visual studio project, xcode, automatically find dependecies, such as Qt, boost, etc.

It is cross plateform and imho not difficult to learn. It is bundled with CTest and CPack, to run and report your tests and deploy your application.

As you said, it is used in many projects, small ones and very big ones such as KDE. There is a port of Boost which use CMake to build instead of bjam for instance.

I warmly recommend you to use it, it is useful to learn how to use popular tools 🙂